Calder with Black Frame (1934), Mobiles by Alexander Calder, The Renaissance Society of The University of Chicago, 1935

Praying Mantis, 1936

Photograph by Soichi Sunami

Paper costumes for A Nightmare Side Show, one of thirteen group processions performed during Paper Ball: Le Cirque des Chiffonniers, First Hartford Festival, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 15 February 1936

Calder in his Roxbury icehouse studio, 1936

Photograph by James Thrall Soby

Calder with an untitled standing mobile in his Roxbury icehouse studio, 1936

Photograph by James Thrall Soby

Frame for Snake and the Cross, New York City storefront studio, winter 1936

Photograph by Herbert Matter

Calder with frame for Snake and the Cross, New York City storefront studio, winter 1936

Prin, Alice (Kiki de Montparnasse). "Secrets of Life in the Famous 'Latin Quarter,' the Follies, Triumphs and Tragedies in the Strangest Collection of Queer People in All the World, Revealed by Mlle. Alice Prin, the Best Known Artist's Model in Europe." The American Weekly, 23 October 1932.Newspaper

1942

Calder, Alexander. "How Can Art Be Realized?" In Art of This Century . . . 1910 to 1942, edited by Peggy Guggenheim. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Art of This Century, 1942. Group Exhibition Catalogue, Statement & Interview

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Artists for Victory: An Exhibition of Contemporary American Art. Exhibition catalogue. 1942.Group Exhibition Catalogue

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Artists for Victory: An Exhibition of Contemporary American Art; A Picture Book of the Prize Winners. Exhibition catalogue. 1942.Group Exhibition Catalogue

"Living Art." A radio interview with exhibition prizewinners Alexander Calder, Philip Evergood, and Jose de Creeft at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Artists for Victory, aired by WABC Radio on 8 December 1942.Unpublished Document or Manuscript, Statement & Interview

Alexander Calder: Sculpture and Constructions (1944). Produced by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 16mm, color, sound (English); 10 min. Written and narrated by Agnes Rindge Claflin; cinematography by Herbert Matter; filmed and recorded by Hartley Productions.Film

Sweeney, James Johnson, ed. Three Young Rats and Other Rhymes. New York: Curt Valentin, 1944.Illustrated Book

View, vol. 4, no. 1 (March 1944).Magazine, Illustration

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Modern Drawings. Exhibition catalogue. 1944.Group Exhibition Catalogue

1948

Dreams That Money Can Buy (1948). Sponsored by Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century, New York. Films International of America, New York. 16mm, color, sound (English); 85 min. Produced and directed by Hans Richter, assisted by Miriam Reaburn; cinematography by Arnold Eagle; music by Louis Applebaum. Film

1950

Works of Calder (1950). Sponsored by New World Films and Motion Picture Stages. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 16mm, color, sound (English); 20 min. Directed and cinematography by Herbert Matter; produced and narrated by Burgess Meredith; music by John Cage.Film

Buchholz Gallery, New York. The Heritage of Auguste Rodin, An Exhibition Assembled in Honor of the Diamond Jubilee of The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Exhibition catalogue. 1950.Group Exhibition Catalogue

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The 75th Anniversary Exhibition of Painting & Sculpture by 75 Artists Associated with the Art Students League of New York. Exhibition catalogue. 1951.Group Exhibition Catalogue

1956

De Grassi, Leonard R. "A Calder Trigraph: A Study of American Criticism as Applied to Three Generations of Calder Style (to 1948)." Master's thesis, University of Southern California, 1956.Unpublished Document or Manuscript

Calder: A Man and His Art (1969). Sponsored by Union Bank and Trust Company. Production Thirteen, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 16mm, color, sound; 26 min. Executive production by William D. Corder; produced and written by David Idema; cinematography by Werner Schneider; narrated by Tom Saizan; edited by Bill Prins. Film

1970

Art in America. American Art Portfolio. Six original graphics in different mediums by Calder, Amuszkiewicz, Dechar, Jenkins, Parker, and Robert Rauschenberg. New York: Art in America, 1970.Portfolio, Illustration

American Academy of Arts and Letters and National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York. Exhibition of Work by Newly Elected Members and Recipients of Honors and Awards. Exhibition catalogue. 1971.Group Exhibition Catalogue

Peace Portfolio II. Portfolio of four lithographs by Calder, Davis, Hinman, and Pearlstein. New York: The Academic and Professional Action Committee for a Responsible Congress and The Congressional Action Fund, 1974.Portfolio

"Who But Braniff? Where But South America?" American Way (c. 1974).Magazine

An American Portrait, 1776–1976: 33 Contemporary Masters Join in a Trilogy Celebrating the Bicentennial. Three portfolios, each comprising of ten prints and one photograph of a sculpture by artists including Calder and Wesselmann. New York: Transworld Art Corporation, 1976.Portfolio

1977

Calder's Universe (1977). Museum at Large and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 16mm, color, sound (English); 26 min. Directed and produced by Paul Falkenberg and Hans Namuth; narration by Louisa Calder, Tom Armstrong, and John Russell. Film

1981

Lipman, Jean, and Margaret Aspinwall, eds. Alexander Calder and his Magical Mobiles. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1981.Monograph

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Alexander Calder: A Concentration of Works from the Permanent Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Exhibition catalogue. 1981.Solo Exhibition Catalogue

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. From Degas to Calder: Sculpture and Works on Paper from the Guggenheim Museum Collection. Exhibition catalogue. 1984.Group Exhibition Catalogue

The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Japan. Development of Sculpture in the Twentieth Century: From Rodin to Christo Opening of MoMA Shiga. Exhibition catalogue. 1984.Group Exhibition Catalogue

1985

Lipman, Jean, and Margi Conrads. Calder Creatures Great and Small. New York: E.P. Dutton in association with the Hudson River Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985. Monograph, Solo Exhibition Catalogue

The Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Terese and Alvin S. Lane Collection: Twentieth-Century Sculpture and Sculptors' Works on Paper. Exhibition catalogue. 1995.Group Exhibition Catalogue

2007

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exhibition catalogue. 2007.Group Exhibition Catalogue

Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Carolina Collects: 150 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art from Alumni Collections. Exhibition catalogue. 2011.Group Exhibition Catalogue

Chronology

CHRONOLOGY

1898

22 July or August: Calder is born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, to Nanette Lederer Calder, a painter, and Alexander Stirling Calder, a sculptor. I always thought I was born—at least my mother always told me so—on August 22, 1898. But my grandfather Milne’s birthday was on August 23, so there might have been a little confusion. In 1942, when I wrote the Philadelphia City Hall for a birth certificate, I sent them a dollar and they told me I was born on the twenty-second of July, 1898. So I sent them another dollar and told them, “Look again.” They corroborated the first statement. (Calder 1966, 11)

1906

End of March: Nanette picks up Calder and Peggy and they rejoin their father in Oracle. Calder befriends Riley, an elderly man recuperating at the ranch who shows him "how to make a wigwam out of burlap bags pinned together with nails." (Calder 1966, 16)

Fall: The Calders move to Pasadena, California. At that time, on Euclid Avenue in Pasadena, I got my first tools and was given the cellar with its window as a workshop. Mother and father were all for my efforts to build things myself—they approved of the homemade . . . My workshop became some sort of a center of attention; everybody came in. (Calder 1966, 21)

Fall: My sister had quite a few dolls for which we made extraordinary jewelry from beads and very fine copper wire that we found in the street left over by men splicing electric cables. (Calder 1952, 37)

25 December: Peggy once gave me a very nice pair of pliers at Christmas. I made her a little Christmas tree, completely decorated, out of a fallen branch. So she wept because my gift was homemade. (Calder 1966, 21)

1907

1909

Spring: The Calders move to a new house on 555 Linda Vista Avenue. Calder's workshop consists of a tent with a wooden floor. Calder attends fourth grade at Garfield School. (CF, Nanette to Trask, 30 March; Calder 1966, 26–27)

Fall: The Calders return to Philadelphia. Calder attends Germantown Academy for two or three months while his parents search for a house close to New York City. (Calder 1966, 28; CF, Calder 1955–56, 7)

Winter: The Calders move to Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Calder has a cellar for his workshop and attends Croton Public School. (Calder 1966, 28–29)

December: For Christmas, Calder presents his parents with a dog and a duck that he trimmed from a brass sheet and bent into formation. The duck is kinetic, rocking back and forth when tapped. (Sweeney 1943, 57; Hayes 1977, 41)

Before 11 January: For his father's birthday, Calder makes Animal Zoo Puzzle, a game consisting of five painted animals—a tiger, a lion, and three bears—and a wooden board with nails divided into six pens. The challenge is to move the animals from their pens without having two animals in the same pen at once. (Hayes 1977, 42)

1912

The Calders move to Spuyten Duyvil, New York. The cellar becomes Calder's workshop. Calder and Peggy attend Yonkers High School. Stirling rents a studio in New York City on 51 West Tenth Street. (Calder 1966, 34–35)

14 August: Stirling is appointed as the acting chief of the department of sculpture of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. He writes the introduction to The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition, published in 1915. (Calder 1966, 36)

1913

June: The Calders move to San Francisco. Calder has a workshop in the cellar and attends Lowell High School. (Calder 1966, 36–37; Hayes 1977, 43–44)

1915

Spring: Stirling and Nanette move to Berkeley to be near Stirling's next commission, the Oakland Auditorium. Calder stays with the architect Walter Bliss and his wife to graduate from Lowell High School. (Calder 1966, 37–38; Hayes 1977, 52–53; CF, Calder 1955–56, 14)

August: The Calders move back to New York City on Claremont Place. (Calder 1966, 39; Hayes 1977, 55)

September: Calder begins his studies at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, where he takes courses which include chemistry, mechanical drawing, shop practice, and surveying, among others. (Calder 1966, 39)

1919

Calder holds jobs with an automotive engineer named Tracy in Rutherford, New Jersey, and with New York Edison Company as a draftsman. (Calder 1966, 48–49)

1920

Fall: Calder joins the staff of Lumber magazine in St. Louis, Missouri. He stays for nine months. (Calder 1966, 48–50)

1921

Summer: Calder works for Nicholas Hill, a hydraulics engineer, coloring maps for a water-supply project in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The efficiency engineers—Miller, Franklin, Basset, and Co.—hire Calder to do fieldwork for the Truscon Steel Company in Youngstown, Ohio. (Calder 1966, 49–50)

1922

Spring: Calder attends night classes in drawing with Clinton Balmer at the New York Public School on Forty-second Street. (Calder 1966, 51)

9 June: Serving on the H.F. Alexander as a fireman in the boiler room, Calder sails from New York to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch—a coil of rope—I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other. Of the whole trip this impressed me most of all; it left me with a lasting sensation of the solar system. (Calder 1966, 53–55; CF, Patterson to ASCR, 26 April 2010)

Mid-June: Arriving in San Francisco, Calder takes a lumber schooner to Willapa Harbor, Washington, where he catches the bus for Aberdeen and meets his sister Peggy and her husband, Kenneth Hayes. Calder finds a job as a timekeeper for a logging camp in Independence, Washington. I was supposed to make out paychecks for people. I also had to scale the logs as they were loaded on the flatcars. (Calder 1966, 55–56)

1923

Spring: With the help of Stirling's introduction, Calder seeks employment with an engineer in Canada. I went to Vancouver and called on him, and we had quite a talk about what career I should follow. He advised me to do what I really wanted to do—he himself often wished he had been an architect. So, I decided to become a painter. (Calder 1966, 59)

Summer: Calder writes the Kellogg Company and suggests they modify their cereal packaging, putting the wax paper on the inside rather than on the outside of the boxes. The company adopts his suggestion and sends him a note of thanks along with a case of Corn Flakes. (Hayes 1977, 76)

Before October: Calder returns to New York and stays with his parents at 119 East Tenth Street. (Calder 1966, 59)

October–December: Calder begins classes at the Art Students League of New York, studying life and pictorial composition with John Sloan and portrait painting with George Luks. (Calder 1966, 59–61, 66–67; ASL, registration records)

1924

January–April: Calder enrolls again at the Art Students League, taking classes in portrait painting with George Luks, head and figure with Guy Pène du Bois, a drawing class with Boardman Robinson, and an etching class. (ASL, registration records)

Before 3 May: Calder begins his first job as an artist, illustrating sporting events and city scenes for the National Police Gazette. (Calder 1966, 67; Gazette, 3 May)

September–November: Calder studies life drawing with Boardman Robinson at the Art Students League. (ASL, registration records)

1925

24 January: A total eclipse of the sun is visible from the northern part of Manhattan. Along with thousands of New Yorkers, Calder travels uptown, stopping at the steps of Columbia University to watch. He makes The Eclipse, an oil painting of the scene. (New York Times, 24 January; CF, object file)

March: Calder studies life drawing with Boardman Robinson at the Art Students League. (ASL, registration records)

6–29 March: Calder exhibits The Eclipse in the "Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists" at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York. In the exhibition catalogue he lists his address as 119 East Tenth Street, where he periodically lives with his parents. (CF, exhibition file)

Before 23 May: Calder spends two weeks illustrating the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for the National Police Gazette. I could tell by the music what act was getting on and used to rush to some vantage point. Some acts were better seen from above and others from below. (Calder 1966, 73; Gazette, 23 May)

Winter: Calder travels to Florida. First he visits Miami, then Sarasota, where he sketches at the winter grounds of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I was very fond of the spatial relations. I love the space of the circus. I made some drawings of nothing but the tent. The whole thing of the—the vast space—I’ve always loved it. (Gray 1964, 23)

1926

January: Artists Gallery, New York, includes an oil painting by Calder in a group exhibition. Murdock Pemberton, the art critic for the New Yorker, comments on the exhibition: A. Calder, too, we think is a good bet. (CF, exhibition file; Pemberton 1926)

Winter: While renting a room in the apartment of Alexander Brook, assistant director of the Whitney Studio Club, Calder embellishes the Brook children's "Humpty Dumpty Circus." He adds movement and articulation to the set of store-bought toys, making an elephant that could "go round a circle" and a mechanism that could "hoist a clown on his back." (Hayes 1977, 90; Calder 1966, 80; CF, Calder 1955–56, 44)

Before 5 March: Calder sketches a human dissection at Physicians and Surgeons Hospital. I drew for several hours and subsequently painted The Stiff . . . I went to a party that evening and kept asking if I did not smell of forma(h)ldehide—my hair, particularly. They said "no"—but the odor was with me—and although I really intended returning, I never did. (CF, Calder 1955–56, 51)

5–28 March: Calder exhibits The Stiff in the Tenth Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York. (CF, exhibition file)

8–20 March: Calder exhibits an oil painting at the Whitney Studio Club Eleventh Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by Members of the Club, Anderson Galleries, New York. (CF, exhibition file)

Spring: At his friend Betty Salemme's house on Candlewood Lake in Sherman, Connecticut, Calder carves his first wood sculpture, Flat Cat, from an oak fence post. (CF, Calder 1955–56, 174)

Spring: Calder moves into a tiny, one-room apartment at 249 West Fourteenth Street. There he makes his first wire sculpture, a sundial in the form of a "rooster on a vertical rod with radiating lines at the foot" to demarcate the hours. (Hayes 1977, 90; Calder 1966, 71–72)

May: Animal Sketching, a drawing manual written by Calder with reproductions of 141 of his brush drawings, is published by Bridgman Publishers. (CF, project file)

May: Calder exhibits The Horse Show in an exhibition on the subject of the horse at the Anderson Galleries, New York, curated by Karl Freund. (CF, exhibition file)

26 June: Calder receives his U.S. passport in preparation for his first voyage to Europe. (CF, passport)

2 July: With the help of his former teacher, Clinton Balmer, Calder signs on to the crew of the Galileo, a British freighter sailing for Hull, England. He works as a laborer, painting the exterior of the ship. (Calder 1966, 76–77; CF, Calder to parents, 18 July)

20 July: Calder arrives in London and stays four nights with Bob Trube, his fraternity brother from Stevens. (CF, Calder to parents, 26 July)

24 July: Calder leaves England, taking the 10 a.m. train from Victoria Station to New Haven and the ferry to Ville de Dieppe in France. He arrives in Paris and calls on Trube's father at the Hôtel de Versailles, 60 boulevard de Montparnasse. [Trube] had written his dad to look out for me. So I got a room here at 35F and am on the 7th floor with a French window that gives fine light and air and a red rug and brown wallpaper that would knock your eye out. Also an upright piano. (CF, Calder to parents, 26 July)

Summer: At the Café du Dôme, a meeting place for artists and their dealers, Calder recognizes American painter Arthur Frank, an acquaintance from New York, and meets British printmaker Stanley William Hayter, whose wife he knew from the Art Students League. (Calder 1966, 78)

8 September: Calder is hired to leave France for a quick round-trip voyage on the SS Volendam Holland America Line; he sketches life on board the ship for the Student Third Cabin Association's poster and advertising brochure. (Calder 1966, 79; CF, Calder to parents, 26 August)

18 September: Calder arrives in New York on the SS Volendam. (CF, Calder to parents, c. 26 August)

Fall: Calder meets Lloyd Sloane, an advertising executive, who introduces him to staff at Le Boulevardier, including Marc Réal, artistic advisor. Several of Calder's drawings are published in Le Boulevardier over the next few months. (Calder 1966, 83)

Fall: Through Hayter, Calder meets José de Creeft, a Spanish sculptor living on rue Broca. De Creeft suggests to Calder that he submit his toys to the "Salon des Humoristes." (Calder 1966, 80)

Fall: Calder begins creating Cirque Calder, a complex and unique body of art. Fashioned from wire, fabric, leather, rubber, cork, and other materials, Cirque Calder is designed to be performed for an audience by Calder. It develops into a multi-act articulated series of mechanized sculpture in miniature scale, a distillation of the natural circus. Calder is able to travel with his easily transportable circus and hold performances on both continents. Over the next five years, Calder continues to develop and expand this work of performance art to fill five large suitcases. (CF, project file)

Fall: Calder performs Cirque Calder for Mrs. Frances C. L. Robbins, a patron of young artists. On her recommendation, English novelist Mary Butts comes to see it and in turn sends Jean Cocteau to a performance. (CF, Calder 1955–56, 68; Hawes 1928)

1927

1 May: Réal brings Guy Selz and the circus critic, Legrand-Chabrier, to see Calder perform Cirque Calder. Legrand-Chabrier admires Calder's work and writes several articles on the Cirque. Oh, these are stylized silhouettes, but astonishing in their miniature resemblance, obtained by means of luck, iron wire, spools, corks, elastics . . . A stroke of the brush, a stroke of the knife, of this, of that; these are the skillful marks that reconstruct the individuals that we see at the circus. Here is a dog who seems like a prehistoric cave drawing with a body of iron wire. He will jump through a paper hoop. Yes, but he may miss his mark or not. This is not a mechanical toy . . . All of this is arranged and balanced according to the laws of physics in action so that it allows for the miracles of circus acrobatics. (Calder 1966, 83; CF, Calder 1955–56, 149–50; Candide, 23 June)

4 August: The New York Herald, Paris, publishes an article about Calder and his decision to make toys: I began by futuristic painting in a small studio in the Greenwich Village section of New York. It was a lot different to engineering but I took to my newfound art immediately. But it seemed that during all of this time I could never forget my training at Stevens, for I started experimenting with toys in a mechanical way. I could not experiment with mechanism as it was too expensive and too bulky so I built miniature instruments. From that the toy idea suggested itself to me so I figured I might as well turn my efforts to something that would bring remuneration. From then on I have constructed several thousand workable toys. (New York Herald, 4 August)

27 September: Calder returns to New York and stays with his parents at 9 East Eighth Street. (CF, Calder 1955–56, 46; Calder 1966, 86)

9 March–1 April: Calder exhibits four sculptures, including Romulus and Remus and Spring, in the Twelfth Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York. (CF, exhibition file)

After 9 April: ACME Film Company produces Sculptor Discards Clay to Ply His Art in Wire, a film of Calder's wire sculpture that includes footage of Calder creating a wire portrait of Elizabeth "Babe" Hawes, a reporter and aspiring fashion designer whom he had met in Paris. (CF, project file)

Summer: Calder spends the summer working on wood and wire sculptures at the Peekskill, New York, farm of J. L. Murphy, the uncle of fraternity brother Bill Drew. I worked outside on an upturned water trough and carved the wooden horse bought later by the Museum of Modern Art, a cow, a giraffe, a camel, two elephants, another cat, several circus figures, a man with a hollow chest, and an ebony lady bending over dangerously, whom I daringly called Liquorice. (CF, Calder 1955–56, 47; Calder 1966, 88–89)

October: Hawes establishes a couture house at West Fifty-sixth Street in New York. Calder occasionally designs neckpieces and other accessories for her clothing. (Hawes 1938, 134–36; Berch 1988, 34–35)

24 October: The French Consulate, New York, grants Calder a visa. (AAA, passport)

3 November: Calder arrives at Le Havre after a voyage from New York on the De Grasse. He returns to Paris, where he rents a small building behind 7 rue Cels to use as his studio. When I returned to Paris in Nov. 28 I was a "wire sculptor" as I put it, also "le roi du fil de fer." (AAA, passport; Calder 1966, 91; CF, Calder 1955–56, 49)

Fall: At the Café du Dôme, Paris, Calder sees his acquaintance, painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and meets "a small man in a bowler hat," who he learns is painter Jules Pascin, a friend of Stirling's. (Calder 1966, 91)

10 December: At the recommendation of Hawes, Calder writes to Joan Miró in Montroig, Spain, suggesting that they meet when Miró returns to Paris. (Calder 1966, 92; FJM, Calder to Miró, 10 December)

After 10 December: Calder visits Miró at his Montmartre studio, "a sort of metal tunnel, a kind of Quonset hut." Miró has no paintings in the studio, but he shows Calder a collage consisting of "a big sheet of heavy gray cardboard with a feather, a cork, and a picture postcard glued to it. There were probably a few dotted lines . . . I was nonplussed; it did not look like art to me." Later, Miró attends Cirque Calder. (Calder 1966, 92)

1929

18–28 January: Calder exhibits Romulus and Remus and Spring at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Indépendants, Paris. The public reaction is a mixture of confusion and delight. One critic remarks, At first, I believed that electricians had forgotten their electrical wire in this room, but as I passed, a wire became agitated and I noticed that it represented the head of a she-wolf. Another tangle of electrical wire represented, by all evidence, a giant young woman. Another critic advises, All the same, look at them. Who knows if the sculpture of Mr. Calder is not that of the future? In any case, it doesn’t spawn melancholy. (CF, exhibition file; Le Journal, 19 January; Liberté, 21 January)

25 January–7 February: Galerie Billiet-Pierre Vorms, Paris, exhibits "Sculptures bois et fil de fer de Alexandre Calder." Pascin writes the preface for the exhibition catalogue:By some miracle, I became a member of a group of Aces of American Art, a Society of very successful painters and sculptors!!! —The fortunes of the life of an itinerant painter! The same luck led me to meet the father Stirling Calder. Away from New York at the time of our exhibition, I cannot testify to the success of our effort; but in any case, I can attest that Mr. Stirling Calder, who is one of our best American sculptors, is also the handsomest man in our Group. Returning to Paris, I met his son SANDY CALDER, who at first sight left me quite disillusioned. He is less handsome than his Dad! Honestly!!! But in the presence of his works, I know that he will soon make his mark; and that despite his appearance, he will exhibit with spectacular success alongside his Dad and other great artists like me, PASCIN, who’s talking to you . . . !(CF, exhibition file)

After 25 January: In writing about his own history of wire sculpting, Calder notes a change in his approach to the medium: Before, the wire studies were subjective, portraits, caricatures, stylized representations of beasts and humans. But these recent things have been viewed from a more objective angle and although their present size is diminutive, I feel that there is no limitation to the scale to which they can be enlarged . . . There is one thing, in particular, which connects them with history. One of the canons of the futuristic painters, as propounded by Modigliani, was that objects behind other objects should not be lost to view, but should be shown through the others by making the latter transparent. The wire sculpture accomplishes this in a most decided manner. (CF, Calder, unpublished manuscript)

2 February: In a review of Calder's solo show at Galerie Billiet-Pierre Vorms, Paris, the phrase "drawing in space" is coined to describe Calder's wire sculptures. Horses rear up, riders brace themselves, dancers throw to the sky legs more rigid than doorbell wires. It looks like a drawing in space. On the following day, Paul Fierens uses the phrase to describe Romulus and Remus and Spring at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Indépendants, Paris. (Paris-Midi, 2 February; Journal des Débats, 3 February)

4–23 February: Weyhe Gallery, New York, exhibits "Wood Carvings by Alexander Calder." Calder writes to his parents about their thoughts on the exhibition. I'm glad you think the show looked well, for I was afraid they would clutter it up and detract from things. (CF, exhibition file; CF, Calder to parents, 5 March)

1–15 April: Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf, Berlin, exhibits "Alexander Calder: Skulpturen aus Holz und aus Draht." Chantal Quenneville Hallis a French paintrix was there and I made a wire fly dangling from a beam attached to a collar. That was about my first jewelry. (Calder 1966, 98–99; CF, Calder 1955–56, 50)

April: In Berlin, Dr. Hans Cürlis directs a short film of Calder creating Two Acrobats as part of the series Artists at Work. Calder makes a wire portrait of Cürlis. (CF, Calder to parents, before 8 May)

Before 8 May: I have had 2 large circus parties since coming back to Paris. At one of them we had Paul Fratellini, one of the famous clowns at the Cirque d’Hiver. It was quite a swell party—and I am making one of the toys in a size large enough for him to use in the Cirque d’Hiver. (CF, Calder to parents, before 8 May)

11 May: Pathé Cinema, Paris, produces a short film of Calder at work in his rue Cels studio. Calder invites Kiki de Montparnasse to model for a wire portrait during the filming. (HRC, Calder to Roché, 10 May; Calder 1966, 99; New York Herald [Paris edition], 21 May)

18 June: Calder performs Cirque Calder in the studio of Tsuguharu Foujita, a painter and well-known denizen of Montparnasse. Foujita plays a drum to accompany Calder’s performance. Man Ray and Kiki are among the guests in attendance. (HRC, Calder to Roché; Illustrirte Zeitung, 29 August)

22 June: Calder embarks for New York on the De Grasse, bringing Cirque Calder with him. During the voyage, he meets Edward Holton James and his daughter, Louisa. So once on board the De Grasse, I started walking the deck. I overtook an elderly man and a young lady. I could only see them from the back, so I reversed my steps the better to see them face on. Upon coming abreast of them the next time around, I said, "Good evening!" And the man said to his daughter, "There is one of them already!" He was Edward Holton James, my future father-in-law. She was Louisa. Her father had just taken her to Europe to mix with the young intellectual elite. All she met were concierges, doormen, cab drivers—and finally me. (AAA, passport; Calder 1966, 101)

Before 28 August: Calder visits Louisa and her older sister, Mary, at Eastham on Cape Cod. Calder was a perfect guest. He mended everything in sight and kept us in gales of laughter all day long. (Calder 1966, 101; CF, Louisa to mother, 29 August)

November–December: Calder stays with his friend, book designer Robert Josephy, at Beekman Place and Fiftieth Street. Josephy was very enthusiastic over my circus. This encouraged me and while at his house, I worked on it very hard. He helped me. We made the chariot race and the lion tamer, and it got to be quite a full blown circus, growing from two suitcases into five. (Calder 1966, 103)

30 November: After the New Yorker announces that performances of Cirque Calder can be arranged through the Junior League Entertainment Center at Saks Fifth Avenue, Calder is hired by Newbold Morris to perform in his Babylon, Long Island, home; Isamu Noguchi operates a phonograph providing the music. ("Sudden Brain Waves," 1929; CF, Calder 1955–56, 142)

16 December: For her birthday, Calder gives Hawes a wire "chastity belt" that spells out her name along with the French café slogan "ouvert la nuit" (open at night). (Hawes 1938, 136; Berch 1988, 34–35)

Before 25 December: Calder creates his first formal mechanized sculpture, Goldfish Bowl, and presents it to his mother as a Christmas gift. For his father, he makes a brass wire fish. In a letter to Peggy, Nanette writes, He made me a fish tank of brass wire, with two fish that wiggle as you turn a crank made also of wire. Waves are indicated along the top. For your Dad a large fish that is now hanging from the electric light. Peggy, it is remarkable. One wire beginning at his tail, running along the backbone to the head where the eyes and mouth are faultlessly placed. Then the wire loops around the back bone as it travels back to form the other half of the tail. This is hard to describe, but it is really wonderful as is the fish bowl in which the fishes bend as tho [sic] swimming. (Hayes 1977, 225–26)

25 December: Calder performs Cirque Calder in the home of Aline Bernstein on Park Avenue. Noguchi is present, as is Thomas Wolfe, who later incorporates a wry fictionalized account of the event into his novel, You Can't Go Home Again. (Calder 1966, 106–107; Hayes 1977, 226)

Before 28 December: At a party thrown by Walter Damrosch at NBC Studios, Calder approaches Aline Fruhauf, the cartoonist for the magazine Top Notes, wearing "a curiously wrought ornament which seemed to be a bee or dragonfly of gold filament, perched where a shirt stud should be. Suddenly, he reached in his pocket, brought out a paper and a pencil and began to caricature the cartoonist." ("By Way of Mention," 1929)

31 December: Calder performs Cirque Calder on New Year's Eve at the home of Jack and Edith Straus on West Fifty-seventh Street, New York. (CF, Calder 1955–56, 142)

1930

17 January–2 March: Two works by Calder are exhibited at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Indépendants, Paris. (CF, exhibition file)

10 March: Calder sails for Spain on the Spanish freighter Motomar. The ship docks briefly in Málaga and Calder explores the town. Two days later, Calder debarks in Barcelona. I went to the Hotel Regina, in a little room up somewhere high. It was then I decided that I liked white walls and red tile flooring . . . I tried to find Miró, but I guess he was away in the country. I went to a bullfight, and then on to Paris by train. (Calder 1966, 108–110)

After 23 May: Calder makes thirteen plaster sculptures and casts eight of them in bronze at the Fonderie Valsuani, Paris. There is a fine bronze foundry at the end of Villa Brune—so I am going to delve into cire perdue. (CF, Calder to parents, 23 May)

6 August: While in Calvi, Calder collects fragments of ancient pottery and fashions the pieces into a necklace. I meant to write you a birthday letter two days ago, but I made you a necklace instead—having brought along pliers and wires, and found bits of things along the parapets of the citadel, to put into it . . . I have been making a lot more wire jewelry—and I think I'll really do something with it, eventually. (CF, Calder to mother, 6 August)

October: In need of money to pay rent, Calder charges admission to performances of Cirque Calder. I bought planks, pinched some boxes, and made bleachers. I handled thirty people an evening on, I believe, four evenings. At the end of my professional run, the concierge came and said the proprietor who lived in the front could not get to sleep on account of the cymbals. (Calder 1966, 113–14)

15 October: Van Doesburg and his wife, Pétronella [Nelly], attend a performance of Cirque Calder. I got more of a reaction from Doesburg than I had from the whole gang the night before. (Calder 1966, 112–13; AAA, circus poster)

October: Accompanied by another American artist, William "Binks" Einstein, Calder visits Mondrian's studio at 26 rue de Départ. Already familiar with Mondrian's geometric abstractions, Calder is deeply impressed by the studio environment. It was a very exciting room. Light came in from the left and from the right, and on the solid wall between the windows there were experimental stunts with colored rectangles of cardboard tacked on. Even the victrola, which had been some muddy color, was painted red. I suggested to Mondrian that perhaps it would be fun to make these rectangles oscillate. And he, with a very serious countenance, said: "No, it is not necessary, my painting is already very fast." This one visit gave me a shock that started things. Though I had heard the word "modern" before, I did not consciously know or feel the term "abstract." So now, at thirty-two, I wanted to paint and work in the abstract. And for two weeks or so, I painted very modest abstractions. At the end of this, I reverted to plastic work which was still abstract. (Calder 1966, 113; CF, Calder 1955–56, 78)

After 6 November: Louisa James decides to marry Calder. I have just come home from a polo game with a not particularly entrancing young man, and I have decided that I am sick to death of going out with one person and another that don't interest me. I am sick of it chiefly because the only person that amuses me and has amused me for the last year and a half, is Sandy. The only thing to do to my mind is to make it permanent and get married, and the sooner the better . . . To me Sandy is a real person which seems to be a rare thing. He appreciates and enjoys the things in life that most people haven't the sense to notice. He has ideals, ambition, and plenty of common sense, with great ability. He has tremendous originality, imagination, and humor which appeal to me very much and which make life colorful and worthwhile. He enjoys working and works hard, and thus ends the summary of his character. (CF, Louisa to mother, after 6 November)

Winter: Calder makes a gold ring to present to Louisa James. I had known a little jeweler in Paris, Bucci, and he had helped me make a gold ring—forerunner of an array of family jewelry—with a spiral on top and a helix for the finger. I thought this would do for a wedding ring. But Louisa merely called this one her "engagement ring" and we had to go to Waltham, near by, and purchase a wedding ring for two dollars. (Calder 1966, 116)

2 December–20 January: Calder exhibits four wood sculptures, including Cow, in "Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. (CF, exhibition file)

17–22 December: Calder returns to New York on the Bremen. (Calder 1966, 114; AAA, postcard, Wiser to Calder)

1931

Before 16 January: Calder prints postcards to announce performances of Cirque Calder at 903 Seventh Avenue, New York. Five performances are given; each audience includes about thirty spectators. (AAA, circus announcement; The World, 18 January)

17 January: Calder and Louisa James are married. The reverend who married us apologized for having missed the circus the night before. So I said: "But you are here for the circus today." (Calder 1966, 115)

Before 1 February: The Calders sail for Europe on the American Farmer. They return to live in Calder's studio at 7 Villa Brune. (Hayes 1977, 249–50; Calder 1966, 116)

February: The Abstraction-Création group is founded; members include Jean Arp, Robert Delaunay, William "Binks" Einstein, Jean Hélion, Mondrian, and Anton Pevsner. (Calder 1966, 114)

27 April–9 May: Calder's abstract work is presented for the first time in the exhibition "Alexandre Calder: Volumes–Vecteurs–Densités / Dessins–Portraits," at Galerie Percier, Paris. Léger writes in the introduction to the catalogue: Eric Satie illustrated by Calder. Why not? "It's serious without seeming to be." Neoplastician from the start, he believed in the absolute of two colored rectangles. . . . Looking at these new works—transparent, objective, exact—I think of Satie, Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp, Brancusi, Arp—these unchallenged masters of unexpressed and silent beauty. Calder is in the same family. He is 100-percent American. Satie and Duchamp are 100-percent French. And yet, we meet? (CF, exhibition file)

27 April: Pablo Picasso arrives before the opening at Galerie Percier to preview the exhibition privately. He introduces himself to Calder. (CF, Calder 1955–56, 95)

2 May: The Calders move into a three-story house at 14 rue de la Colonie. Calder makes the top floor of his house his studio. (Calder 1966, 121; Hayes 1977, 252–53; AAA, taxi receipt)

May: Louisa buys a dog, a small Briard mix. She and Calder name him Feathers because of his wispy hair. (Calder 1966, 121–22; CF, Calder to parents, c. 16 June)

End of May: Mary Reynolds is up from Villefranche for a few weeks, so we are seeing a bit of her and Marcel Duchamp. (CF, Calder to parents, c. 5 June)

July: Calder's wire sculpture is included in an exhibition of Novembergruppe at Künstlerhaus, Berlin. (CF, exhibition file)

Before 12 July: Calder continues to expand the use of motion in his abstract sculpture. I felt that perhaps I was exactly a perfectionist: i.e. that who was I to decide that a thing should be just this way, or just that way—so I made one or 2 objects articulated, so that they could be in a number of positions. (CF, Calder 1955–56, 108)

12 July: Calder writes his parents of his new work: I have been making a few new abstractions which have certain movements combined with their other features. I think there is something in it that may be good. (CF, Calder to parents, 12 July)

4 August–11 September: The Calders visit Palma de Mallorca, staying at the Hotel Mediterraneo. They call on the Juncosas, Pilar Miró's family. After a month in Paguera, they return to Paris. (CF, Calder to parents, 31 July, 18 September; Calder 1966, 122–23)

Fall: Marcel Duchamp visits the studio at 14 rue de la Colonie again and sees Calder's latest works. There was one motor-driven thing, with three elements. The thing had just been painted and was not quite dry yet. When he put his hands on it, the object seemed to please him, so he arranged for me to show in Marie Cuttoli's Galerie Vignon, close to the Madeleine. I asked him what sort of a name I could give these things and he at once produced Mobile. In addition to something that moves, in French it also means motive. Duchamp also suggested that on my invitation card I make a drawing of the motor-driven object and print: CALDER/SES MOBILES. (Calder 1966, 127)

November: Calder selects a sculpture from among the works exhibited at Galerie Percier and donates it to the recently founded Miejskie Muzeum Historji i Sztuki (Muzeum Sztuki w Lodzi), in Lodz, Poland. The work is later lost during World War II. (Calder 1966, 118)

1932

Calder publishes "Comment réaliser l'art?" for the first issue of Abstraction-Création, Art Non Figuratif. Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe. Out of different masses, light, heavy, middling—indicated by variations of size or color—directional line—vectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces, etc. . . .—these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many. Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds. Nothing at all of this is fixed. Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements in its universe. It must not be just a fleeting moment but a physical bond between the varying events in life. Not extractions, But abstractions Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting. (Calder 1932)

After 12 February: In response to Duchamp's term "mobile," Arp asks sarcastically, Well, what were those things you did last year [for Percier's]—stabiles? Calder adopts "stabile" to refer to his static works. (Calder 1966, 130)

8 March: Calder writes the statement “Que ça bouge: À propos des sculptures mobiles.” The various objects of the universe may be constant, at times, but their reciprocal relationships always vary. There are environments that appear to remain fixed whilst there are small occurrences that take place at great speed across them. They appear so only because one sees nothing but the mobility of the small occurrences. We notice the movement of automobiles and beings in the street, but we do not notice that the earth turns. We believe that automobiles go at a great speed on a fixed ground; yet the speed of the earth’s rotation at the equator is 40,000 km every 24 hours. As truly serious art must follow the greater laws, and not only appearances, I try to put all the elements in motion in my mobile sculptures. It is a matter of harmonizing these movements, thus arriving at a new possibility of beauty. (CF, Calder, unpublished manuscript)

12 March: In a letter to Kiesler, Calder describes the reaction to his mobiles. We had a lot of visitors—Léger, Picasso, Carl Einstein, Binks Einstein, Petro van Doesburg, Cocteau, Roux, etc.—who all were enthusiastic about "abstract sculptures which move" (toy elec. motors being used). There was only one dissenter . . . that was Mondrian. He said they weren't fast enough, and when I stepped on the gas, he said they still weren't fast enough, so I said I'd make one especially fast, to please him, and then he said that that wouldn't be fast enough—because the whole thing ought to be still. Now I feel that beauty of motion is a very real thing—unrelated to any definite machinery. Whether I've achieved it is, of course, another question. (CF, Calder to Kiesler, 12 March)

Spring: Joan Miró, the spanish painter who lives now in Barcelona, is in Monte Carlo, doing the decors for a Ballet Russe. He knows my stuff, so I wrote him, and sent him photos and perhaps I will be able to arrange for myself to do a ballet next year. The Russian who used them, Daglieff (?) [sic], died 2 years ago, but one of the McCormacks has put up some money for their continuance. (CF, Calder to parents; Hayes 1977, 264)

May: In preparation for their departure from Antwerp to New York on a Belgian freighter, the Calders rent their house to Gabrielle Buffet, the former wife of Francis Picabia. (Calder 1966, 136–37)

9 May: Calder introduces himself in writing to American art critic James Johnson Sweeney. About 3 or 4 months [ago] M. Fernand Léger came to my house in Paris to see my "mobiles"—abstract sculptures which move—and said he would like to bring you to have a look at them too . . . I am exposing a few of these "mobiles" at the Julien Levy Gallery 602 Madison Ave N.Y.C. and would be very pleased if you would come and see them. (JJS, Calder to Sweeney, 9 May)

11 June: Before a group of reporters visiting his exhibition at Julien Levy Gallery, Calder demonstrates the motion in Two Spheres. This has no utility and no meaning. It is simply beautiful. It has great emotional effect if you understand it. Of course if it meant anything it would be easier to understand but it would not be worthwhile. (New York World-Telegram, 11 June)

Before 10 September: The Calders arrive in Barcelona after a fourteen-day passage on the Cabo Tortosa, Garcia and Díaz Spanish line. Following a stop in Málaga, they take a train from Barcelona to Tarragona. (Calder 1966, 138–40; FJM, Calder to Miró, 19 July)

12 September: The Calders arrive at the Miró farm in Montroig for an eight- to ten-day visit. During their stay, Calder performs Cirque Calder for the Mirós, their farmhands, and their neighbors. Miró recalls the event: He came to Montroig and brought the circus figures; he never stopped working on them. We organized a presentation for the local farmers who were very pleased with the spectacle of the wire performers. Later the Cirque was presented in galleries, but there in Montroig it was really a performance for the people. (Calder 1966, 139; Lanchner 1993, 330; Raillard 1977, 114–15)

Before 29 September: The Calders return to Barcelona and visit Gaudí's basilica. Invited by the Amics de l'Art Nou, Calder performs Cirque Calder in the hall of the Grup d'Arquitects i Tecnics Catalans per al Progres de l'Arquitectura Contemporania (GATCPAC). Shortly thereafter, the Calders return to Paris. (Calder 1966, 140–41; Gasch 1932)

1933

Calder publishes "Un Mobile" for the second issue of Abstraction-Creation, Art Non Figuratif.A "Mobile."Dimensions: 2 meters by 2 meters 50Frame: 8 centimeters, neutral red.The 2 white balls turn very rapidly.The black helix turns less rapidly and seems to always climb.The iron plate turns still less quickly, the two black lines seeming always to climb.The black pendulum. 40 centimeters in diameter. climbs by 45° on each side, passing in front of the frame, at the rate of 25 turns a minute.(Calder 1933)

19–31 January: Calder's sculptures are included in the group exhibition "Première série," organized by the Association Artistique Abstraction-Création, Paris. (CF, exhibition file)

29–30 January: The Calders take a train from Paris to Madrid, where they visit the Museo del Prado. (CF, Calder to Peggy, 2 February)

1–2 February: Works by Calder are presented at the Sociedad de Cursos y Conferencias, Residencia de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Madrid. Calder also performs Cirque Calder for the students. (AAA, Circus program; CF, Louisa to mother, 11 February)

Spring: Calder constructs an interactive "performance" sculpture. I had a small ballet-object, built on a table with pulleys at the top of a frame. It was possible to move coloured discs across the rectangle, or fluttering pennants, or cones; to make them dance, or even have battles between them. Some of them had large, simple, majestic movements; others were small and agitated. (Calder 1937, 64; CF, Calder to Sweeney, 19 July 1934)

16–18 May: Galerie Pierre Colle, Paris, exhibits "Présentation des oeuvres récentes de Calder." Reviewing the exhibition, Paul Recht writes: The liberty of some of the ensembles is absolutely disconcerting: we see two balls, one little and one big, in turn fixed to wires of very different lengths that are themselves fixed to the two extremities of a balancing arm hung above the ground. The big ball is animated by a pendular and rotary movement; it leads the little one on unexpected evolutions that multiply by impact upon surrounding objects. They are extraordinary visual variations on the theme of calamity, by the means of gravity and centrifugal force. (CF, exhibition file; Recht 1933)

6 July: The Calders give up their house in Paris and return to New York in the company of Hélion. There were so many articles in the European press about war preparations that we thought we had better head for home. (CF, Calder to Cooper, 2 July; Calder 1966, 143–44)

July–August: Louisa and Calder visit Louisa's parents in Concord and Calder's parents in Richmond, Massachusetts. They search for a new house along the Housatonic River in Massachusetts, while also considering real estate in Tarrytown and New City, New York; Yaphank, Long Island; and Westport and Sandy Hook, Connecticut. (Calder 1966, 143–44)

12–27 August: Among the fifteen Calder sculptures on display in "Modern Painting and Sculpture" at the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, are Dancing Torpedo Shape, Nymph, and one of the wire Josephine Bakers. Calder writes a statement for the catalogue. Why not plastic forms in motion? Not a simple translatory or rotary motion, but several motions of different types, speeds and amplitudes composing to make a resultant whole. Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions. (CF, exhibition file)

August: The Calders visit a real-estate agency in Danbury, Connecticut. After viewing several properties, they discover a dilapidated eighteenth-century farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut; both Louisa and Calder claim to have been the first to exclaim, "That's it!" They purchase it, and Calder converts the adjoining icehouse into a modest dirt-floored studio. (Calder 1966, 143; CF, mortgage records)

1934

Winter: Calder makes Project for Mechanical Ballet for the American composer Harrison Kerr.

7 February: The Calders attend the premiere of Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts, which is set to music by Virgil Thomson and performed at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Afterward, they attend dinner at the home of A. Everett "Chick" Austin, Jr., director of the Atheneum, where they meet with old friends, including Thomson and Julien Levy, and new acquaintances such as James Thrall Soby. (Calder 1966, 146)

28 February–31 March: The First Municipal Art Exhibition, Radio City, Rockefeller Center, New York, exhibits three works by Calder, including a drawing titled Abstraction, and a standing mobile. (CF, exhibition file; Calder 1966, 148)

23 March: I thought for a moment that I was going to London last December. The Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo wired me to come to London to work on a ballet (but at my expense). They have been here for 3 months now and I am supposed to go to Monte-Carlo with them when they return, but that may fall thru, too. In the meantime I am having one of my funny expositions–at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. (CF, Calder to Thomson, 23 March)

6–28 April: "Mobiles by Alexander Calder" is presented at Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York. Sweeney writes the preface for the catalogue, The evolution of Calder's work epitomizes the evolution of plastic art in the present century. Out of a tradition of naturalistic representation, it has worked by a simplification of expressional means to a plastic concept which leans on the shapes of the natural world only as a source from which to abstract the elements of form. (Calder 1966, 148; CF, exhibition file)

Before 6 April: In Roxbury, Calder creates Black Frame. One I like very much is a black wooden frame, with sheets of metal within it, warped into various planes, and having certain moving elements, which are the brilliant spots in an otherwise sombre setting. (CF, object file; CF, Calder to Gallatin, 13 September 1935)

26 May: Massine had wired me to come to London (at my expense) last November, and in January decided to pay my fare to and from Monte Carlo, and I had decided to go (at about this time)––but as it was only to bolster up a ballet which had been very badly done sometime previous I finally declined to have anything to do with it, preferring to wait till I was given carte blanche. It's very annoying, for I am positive that I could do something excellent for them––but the other fellow's 'work' would have been too hampering. (CF, Calder to Nicholson, 26 May)

Summer: In Roxbury, Calder works prolifically on "panels" and "frames." (Sweeney 1951, 38)

19 July: I am very much interested in developing a sort of ballet of mine––and devising the means of recording it so that it can be reproduced. The backgrounds can be changed––and the lighting varied. The discs can move anywhere within the limits of the frame, at any speed. Each disc and its supporting pulleys is in a separate vertical plane parallel to the frame. The number of discs can be increased indefinitely––depending on the necessary clearances. In addition to discs there are coloured pennants (of cloth), with weights on them, which fly at high speed––and various solid objects, bits of hose, springs, etc. [...] I had this in Paris the spring of 1933 and showed it to Massine–– along with many other things, and it's what I wanted to do for the Ballets Russes. Of course the real problem to magnify the movement to a full sized proscenium––but I can see various ways of obtaining it. (CF, Calder to the Sweeneys, 19 July)

28 July: As to the ballet––I hear from Zervos that they have no cash––and can’t even put on the ballets which have been done for them. I hope to do something with Martha Graham––the American dancer––whom I saw dance this spring––and whom I think excellent. (CF, Calder to Nicholson, 28 July)

11 August: Martha Graham, the dancer, whose performances you may have seen last April in New York, and whom I consider very fine, was here last night––and we are going to try to do something together––my part being based on the idea of the ballet I worked by hand (with discs, bits of cloth, etc.) when you came to the house in Paris. (CF, Calder to Gallatin, 11 August)

8–23 September: Calder exhibits three mobile works in the Twenty-sixth Annual Stockbridge Exhibition held at the Berkshire Playhouse, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. 2 of them are for the garden, wind propelled—and (I think), good. (New York Times, 9 September; CF, Calder to Sweeney, 30 August)

Before 20 September: Calder takes Louisa to stay with her parents in Concord during her pregnancy. (Calder 1966, 150; JJS, Calder to Sweeney, 20 September)

1935

14–31 January: "Mobiles by Alexander Calder" is held at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; Sweeney writes the preface for the catalogue. On the 16th and 19th of January, Calder gives performances of Cirque Calder in the University of Chicago's Wieboldt Hall for the Renaissance Society. He also performs at the home of Walter S. Brewster, a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, on 20 January. (Calder 1966, 153; CF, exhibition file; Chicago Tribune, 10 January)

After February: Calder offers Sweeney a sculpture from his first show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, for which Sweeney had written an introduction to the catalogue. Sweeney chooses Object with Red Discs; on principle, he insists that Calder accept a small sum in return for the sculpture. The Sweeney family enjoys the object immensely and Sweeney's brother, John, dubs it "Calderberry-bush." (Calder 1966, 148; ASCR conversation with Seán Sweeney, 22 July 1997)

Spring: While traveling home from Chicago, Calder stops in Rochester, New York, to see Charlotte Whitney Allen, who commissions a standing mobile for her garden, which had been designed by landscape architect Fletcher Steele. (Calder 1966, 153–54)

After 15 August: Calder presents Bonnie Bird, one of the lead dancers of Panorama, a brooch in the shape of a bird. (Bell-Kanner 1998, 80)

After 27 September: Calder and Louisa visit Charlotte Whitney Allen in Rochester, New York. While there, Calder constructs the large standing mobile she had commissioned for her garden and he gives a performance of Cirque Calder. (CF, Calder to Allen, 24 September)

Winter: Calder again collaborates with Graham, making a group of six mobiles—"visual preludes"—for her dance Horizons. (CF, project file; "Martha Graham and Dance Group," 1936)

Winter: The Calders spend the winter in an apartment at 244 Eighty-sixth Street and Second Avenue, New York. Calder rents a small store and converts it into a studio. (Calder 1966, 156; Calder to Thomson, April 1936)

5 December: Thomas H. Fisher, husband of choreographer Ruth Page, writes to Calder: Ruth [Page] and I have the novel idea that you should construct for her a large scale ‘mobile’ to be used alone on the stage, with music and lights between her ballets. The idea would be to enlarge such a mobile as the one I saw in the Museum of Modern Art to stage proportions using different colored objects in motion and then playing lights on the mobile from the wings and elsewhere in the theatre. The music would, perhaps, be something like Varese or something else which would be suitable to the particular mobile being displayed. (CF, Fisher to Calder, 5 December)

24 December: The large ‘overhead’ mobile should be in its box in your basement (awaiting my pleasure). Do you think you would care to put it up anywhere during la semaine folle––only a suggestive question––because Ruth Page wishes me to do an object which she can use, here, and in Chicago, to pinch-hit for one of her solo dances––and I thought of that one. (CF, Calder to Austin, 24 December)

1936

Julien Levy’s Surrealism, the first English text on the subject, is published in New York. Levy writes:It is impossible accurately to estimate the relative importance of the younger surrealists, until aided by the perspective of time. Outstanding among the newcomers seem to be Gisèle Prassinos, Richard Oelze, Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Alexander Calder, and Joseph Cornell . . . Calder is sometimes surrealist and sometimes abstractionist. It is to be hoped that he may soon choose in which direction he will throw the weight of his talents. (Levy 1936, 28)

Page writes to Calder: I have been experimenting with my brass mobile which you sent here and have decided that it is much more beautiful without me than with me. Any movements of mine just spoil it. However, we tried it just in the room here with lights and music and it is a thrilling dance all by itself and we would have to produce it just by itself with lights and music. Blow an electric fan on it so that it moves very slightly. But it seems to me there should be a little group of 2 or 3 to make an impression––like 3 short dances. (CF, Page to Calder)

10–29 February: "Mobiles and Objects by Alexander Calder" is held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York. (CF, exhibition file)

15 February: First Hartford Music Festival, Wadsworth Atheneum, presents Erik Satie's symphonic drama Socrate. Conductor Virgil Thomson has commissioned Calder to create the mobile decor for the performance. As the singers stand still at either end of the stage, Calder's simple geometric objects enact a series of movements across the stage. Later that night the festival continues with Paper Ball: Le Cirque des Chiffoniers, designed by Pavel Tchelitchew and featuring thirteen processions of paper costumes created especially for the event. For Soby's procession, Calder contributes A Nightmare Side Show, a suite of animal costumes designed to wear over evening clothes. (CF, project file)

23 February: Graham premieres Horizons at the Guild Theatre in New York City. The program note reads: The "Mobiles," designed by Alexander Calder, are a new conscious use of space. They are employed in Horizons as visual preludes to the dances in this suite. The dances do not interpret the "Mobiles," nor do the "Mobiles" interpret the dances. They are employed to enlarge the sense of horizon. (CF, project file; "Martha Graham and Dance Group," 1936)

2 March–19 April: "Cubism and Abstract Art" is presented by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Calder is represented by A Universe and a hanging mobile. (CF, exhibition file)

Winter: Calder is commissioned by architect Paul Nelson to design a trophy for CBS's Annual Amateur Radio Award. The work is William S. Paley Trophy for Amateur Radio. (CF, project file; Calder 1966, 155)

7 December 1936–17 January 1937: Calder’s Praying Mantis and Object with Yellow Background are included in the exhibition "Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism," organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. (CF, exhibition file)

15 December: Calder performs Cirque Calder in his apartment at 244 East Eighty-sixth Street and Second Avenue, New York. (AAA, Calder to Bunce, 9 December)

1937

Calder designs scenery and costumes for OO to AH, a playlet in two scenes written by Charles Tracy but never performed. (CF, project file; Tracy 1937)

Late April: Nelson and his wife, Francine, invite the Calders to stay with them in Varengeville, on the Normandy coast. Léger, Pierre Matisse, and Matisse's wife, Teeny, also visit. (Calder 1966, 156–57)

Late April or early May: The Calders return to Paris, where they move to 80 boulevard Arago, a house designed by Nelson and owned by Calder's friend Alden Brooks. Visitors include Finnish architect Alvar Aalto and his wife, Aino. Calder uses the garage, outfitted with an automotive turntable, as a studio. (Calder 1966, 157–58)

May: Calder and Miró visit the Spanish Pavilion under construction at the 1937 World's Fair site in Paris. Calder meets the pavilion's architects, Josép Lluís Sert and Luis Lacasa. Sert eventually commissions Calder to make Mercury Fountain for the Spanish Pavilion. Mined in Almadén in Spain, the mercury symbolizes Republican resistance to fascism. (Calder 1966, 158; Freedberg 1986, 504–505)

July: The Calders rent a house in Varengeville, where Calder uses the garage as his studio. Among the visitors to the house are painters Georges Braque, Pierre Loeb, Ben Nicholson, and John Piper; art journalist and critic Myfanwy Evans; sculptor Barbara Hepworth; Miró; the Nelsons; and cultural theorist Herbert Read. (Calder 1966, 162–63)

11 December: A review of the exhibition at the Mayor Gallery notes, Calder's jewelry is as pretty as his mobiles—some of it too is "mobile"—and often more seriously lovely. If the lady of fashion has the wit to see it, she may find that pieces of human ingenuity make rather more distinguished ornaments than Cartier's portable currency. (CF, exhibition file; New Statesman and Nation, 11 December)

14 December: In reference to the Mayor Gallery exhibition, Calder writes, The show is going quite well . . . Sold 3 objects so far, & a lot of jewelry. Buyers of his jewelry include prominent characters of London society, including Lady Clark, wife of London's National Gallery director, Kenneth Clark. (CF, Calder to Sweeney, 14 December; CF, exhibition file, unsigned newspaper clipping from Sketch, 8 December)

22 December: An unsigned review of the Mayor Gallery in Vogue declares, Calder . . . occasionally makes jewellery of great charm and originality. He bends and twists gold and silver metal into fantastic and gorgeous patterns, very much in the modern manner. Women of taste should ask to see some at the Gallery. (CF, exhibition file; "Shop-Hound Goes to a Party," 1937)

1938

1 March: The Calders return to New York. They rent a different apartment in the building at 244 East Eighty-sixth Street and Second Avenue where they had previously lived. (Calder 1966, 167)

October: Calder begins construction of a large studio on the old dairy barn foundations in Roxbury and converts his icehouse studio into a living space that comes to be known as the "Big Room." (Calder 1966, 169–70)

1939

Calder is commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to make Lobster Trap and Fish Tail, a mobile he installs in the principal stairwell of the museum's new building on West Fifty-third Street. (Lipman 1976, 332; Marter 1991, 197)

Calder is invited to make sculptures for an African habitat designed by Oscar Nitzschke for the Bronx Zoo. Calder conceives of treelike sculptures to be made in steel so they can withstand the abuse of the wild animals. Although the habitat is never realized, Calder creates four models for the project: Sphere Pierced by Cylinders, Four Leaves and Three Petals, Leaves and Tripod, and The Hairpins. (New York Times, 24 October)

Spring: Calder creates six maquettes to complement architect Percival Goodman's design for the Smithsonian Gallery of Art Architectural Competition, sponsored by the Smithsonian Gallery of Art Commission. Goodman is awarded second place to Eliel Saarinen, and the project goes unrealized. (CF, Calder to Matisse, 3 May 1942; CF, Goodman correspondence)

January: The exhibition "III Salão de Maio," São Paulo, Brazil, includes gouaches and a mobile by Calder. (CF, exhibition file)

After 1 March: Calder is commissioned by Wallace K. Harrison and André Fouilhoux, architects of Consolidated Edison's pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, to design a "water ballet" for the building's fountain. Although water jets are installed around the pavilion, this ballet is never executed. (Calder 1966, 176)

30 April: Calder submits a Plexiglas stabile to a competition sponsored by Röhm and Haas at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The work is exhibited at the Hall of Industrial Science during the New York World's Fair. (CF, exhibition file; Calder 1966, 175; "Abstract Sculpture in Plexiglas," 1939)

1940

Before 9 October: Marian Willard shows an array of Calder's jewelry to Valentina, a renowned haute couture dressmaker in New York. Valentina objects to the prices of the items and Willard takes them next to Harper's Bazaar where they are photographed. (CF, Willard to Calder, 9 October)

11–14 October: A private exhibition of Calder's sculptures takes place inside and outside the home of Wallace Harrison and his wife, Ellen, in Huntington, Long Island. (MoMA, invitation; CF, Myra Martin to Ellen Harrison, 24 October)

16 October: Carmel Snow, the legendary editor of Harper's Bazaar, writes to Willard: The photographs of Sandy Calder's jewelry turned out beautifully . . . we will publish these either in December or January. (CF, Snow to Willard, 16 October)

3–25 December: "Calder Jewelry" is presented at Willard Gallery, New York. In her press release for the show, Willard writes, These works of art are savage and deliberate and self-confidently sophisticated . . . This is a master modern artist's contribution to the history of fashion. For a world already in chains it is superb stuff. (CF, exhibition file)

1941

28 March–11 April: "Alexander Calder: Mobiles / Jewelry" and "Fernand Léger: Gouaches / Drawings" are presented at the Arts and Crafts Club of New Orleans. Twenty-five works of jewelry are exhibited. (CF, exhibition file)

27 September–27 October: "Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Jewelry" and "A Few Paintings by Paul Klee" are on view at the Design Project, Los Angeles. Sent along with the jewelry is an inventory book with illustrations by Calder of each piece. (CF, exhibition file)

1 October: Following the success of the previous year, Willard planned a second jewelry show. As she wrote to Calder, I am a little concerned about the lack of "jewels" on the horizon at present . . . You will have to do prodigious work the next two months. Remember the small, well fashioned, wearable ones are what we will cash in on. (CF, Willard to Calder, 1 October)

29 October: Calder sends jewelry to Charlotte Whitney Allen in Rochester, who plans to display it for the Christmas season. The jewelry is here and it is too beautiful. I hope we will sell a lot and make our everlasting fortune. We can't find any list of pieces. Was there one in the box or will you send it later. (CF, Allen to Calder, 4 November)

November: Tanguy and Kay Sage, the Surrealist painters, rent a home from their friend Hugh Chisholm in nearby Woodbury, Connecticut, and become close friends of the Calders. Rose and André Masson live in nearby New Preston. (Suther 1997, 106)

Late Fall: Ellen Harrison asks Calder if he is interested in exhibiting his jewelry in Washington, D.C.: Everyone is in Washington these days and there is nothing to by [sic]. I wonder if you would like to show your jewelry if a decent place for such an exhibit could be found? . . . I will ask around if you would like to have me do so. (CF, Harrison to Calder)

3 November: Elizabeth Rockwell, owner of the Outlines Gallery in Pittsburgh, writes to Calder: Starting on November 16 there is an exhibit of modern prints, woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, etc.—and I am wondering whether I might show some of your jewelry concurrently with this exhibit. (CF, Rockwell to Calder, 3 November)

4–19 November: "Mobiles by Alexander Calder, Stabiles and Jewelry" is held at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Eighty pieces of jewelry are exhibited: The "jewels" fashioned from odd pieces of metal and rocks are an adventure. (CF, exhibition file; San Francisco Chronicle, 16 November)

Before 7 November: At her request, Calder sends Charlotte Whitney Allen an inventory book of the jewelry he has sent her. It is an illustrated list of each work sent drawn in a composition notebook. She thanks him in a letter for "the most explicit list" and writes that the window display of his jewelry that she has arranged "is really quite grand and everyone is very enthusiastic." (CF, Allen to Calder, 7 November)

12 November: Calder sends thirty-five works of jewelry to Rockwell of the Outlines Gallery for inclusion in a group exhibition. An illustrated list of works accompanies the shipment. (CF, illustrated jewelry list dated by Calder)

8–21 December: Willard Gallery, New York, exhibits "Calder Jewelry." After setting up the exhibition the previous day, Calder returns briefly to Roxbury on the morning of 8 December to pick up Louisa and bring her to New York for the show's vernissage. Upon his arrival, Louisa informs him that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor the previous day and the United States has entered World War II. (CF, exhibition file; Calder 1966, 179)

18 December: Calder sends thirty-four works of jewelry that have recently been returned to him from his exhibitions in California to Ellen Harrison in Washington, D.C. (CF, jewelry inventory book)

1942

Calder meets artist Saul Steinberg. (CF, Whitney memorial program)

3 March: Calder is commissioned to make Red Petals for the Arts Club of Chicago. (Calder 1966, 185–86; CF, Rue Shaw to Calder, 3 March)

7–28 March: Sculptures by Calder and paintings by Miró are exhibited at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. (CF, exhibition file)

Before 9 March: After several months with his jewelry, Rockwell of Outlines Gallery writes, Tomorrow the jewelry will be packed and sent. I would like to keep it even longer but unfortunately there seems no hope of selling more . . . I am sorry to hear that your recent exhibits have not been very successful and I wish that I had more success with mine. The war, I suppose. (CF, Rockwell to Calder, 9 March)

Spring: In regard to the jewelry sent from Calder the previous winter, Ellen Harrison writes, I hated to send you back your . . . things without removing even one piece last winter. Well let's forget that one. (CF, Ellen Harrison to Calder)

June: The first issue of VVV, a Surrealist journal founded and edited by David Hare in collaboration with editorial advisers Breton and Max Ernst, is published. The issue features two Herbert Matter photographs of Calder’s Roxbury property. Written below the photographs: In our days the aviary of all Light and the nocturnal refuge Of all tinkling. The Studio of Alexander Calder, Roxbury, Conn. The time of enchantment and the art of living. (VVV 1942)

July–November: Calder is classified 1-A (top eligibility) by the army, though he is never drafted. He studies industrial camouflage at New York University and applies for a commission in camouflage work with the Marine Corps: Although the army says that the painter is of little or no use in modern camouflage, I feel that this is not so, and that the camoufleur is still a painter, but on an immense scale . . . and in a negative sense (for instead of creating, he demolishes a picture and reduces it to nil . . . ). (Calder 1966, 183; CF, Calder application to the Marine Corps, 21 September)

14 October–7 November: The Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies sponsors the exhibition "First Papers of Surrealism" at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion, New York, organized by Breton and Duchamp. Duchamp creates Mile of String on which he invites Calder to hang his works. Calder proceeds to construct small paper sculptures intended as a pun on the exhibition's title. However, Breton vetoes the collaboration, and the large standing mobile The Spider is installed instead. (CF, exhibition file)

20 October: The inaugural exhibition of Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century, New York, opens with an installation designed by Frederick Kiesler. Guggenheim wears one earring by Tanguy and one earring by Calder, who is represented in the exhibition by Arc of Petals. (Lader 1981, 363–67)

Before 12 November: The Calders move to 255 East Seventy-second Street. After housing Luis Buñel and his family at 244 East Eighty-sixth Street, the Calders eventually signed over their lease to them. (CF, Masson to Calder, 12 November)

Winter: Calder works on a new open form of sculpture made of carved wood and wire. They had a suggestion of some kind of cosmic nuclear gases—which I won't try to explain. I was interested in the extremely delicate, open composition. Sweeney and Duchamp propose the name "constellations" for these sculptures. (Calder 1966, 179; Arnason and Mulas 1971, 202)

7 December 1942–22 February 1943: "Artists for Victory: An Exhibition of Contemporary American Art" is presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Calder wins fourth prize. Other prizewinners include de Creeft and Philip Evergood who are interviewed with Calder at the museum for a WABC Radio program, Living Art, that broadcasts on 8 December. (CF, exhibition file; AAA, oral history collection)

1943

16 April–15 May: Art of This Century, New York, hosts “Exhibition of Collage,” including works by Arp, Braque, Calder, Joseph Cornell, Duchamp, Ernst, Robert Motherwell, and Picasso. (Lader 1981, 375)

28 May–6 July: "17 Mobiles by Alexander Calder" is held at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts. The catalogue contains a statement by Calder: At first [my] objects were static, seeking to give a sense of cosmic relationship. Then . . . I introduced flexibility, so that the relationships would be more general. From that I went to the use of motion for its contrapuntal value, as in good choreography. (Calder 1943, 6)

28 August: Calder writes to Sweeney about his forthcoming retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. I forgot to show you this object. One swings the red (iron) ball in a small circle––this movement and the inertia of the rod and the length of thread develops a very complicated pattern of movement. The impedimenta––boxes, cymbal, bottles, cans etc. add to the complication, and also add sounds of thuds, crashes, etc.––This is a reconstruction of one I had in Paris in '33. I will bring it down and set it up for you to see. I call it the "Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere." (CF, Calder to Sweeney, 28 August)

29 September 1943–16 January 1944: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presents "Alexander Calder: Sculptures and Constructions," curated by Sweeney and Duchamp. Calder writes, Simplicity of equipment and an adventurous spirit in attacking the unfamiliar or unknown are apt to result in a primitive and vigorous art. Somehow the primitive is usually much stronger than art in which technique and flourish abound. Originally scheduled to close on 28 November 1943, the exhibition is extended to 16 January 1944 due to public demand. (CF, exhibition file)

20–21 October: Calder gives two performances of Cirque Calder in the Members Room of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for friends and staff. (CF, exhibition file)

30 November–31 December: Peggy Guggenheim presents “Natural, Insane, Surrealist Art” at Art of This Century, New York. Organized with Ladislas Segy, the exhibition features two works by Calder, as well as works by Ernst, Klee, Masson, Roberto Matta, Miró, and Tanguy, among others. (Lader 1981, 385)

4 December: Both the "Big Room" and part of the Roxbury farmhouse are destroyed by an electrical fire. Louisa tells Calder about the fire when he joins them on 7 December. (Calder 1966, 186; NL, Calder to Shaw, 14 December)

1944

Agnes Rindge Claflin writes and narrates Alexander Calder: Sculpture and Constructions, a film based on the retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Cinematography is by Matter. (CF, project file)

Calder gives Black Flower to the Museum of Western Art in Moscow. (Calder 1966, 185)

19 February–18 March: “Color and Space in Modern Art Since 1900” is on view at Mortimer Brandt, New York. The exhibition includes three sculptures by Calder, including Cage within a Cage and Morning Star. (MA, brochure)

Before 3 April: Calder makes the acquaintance of Keith Warner, owner of a leather manufacturing company and already a patron of several artists. He also becomes a devoted supporter of Calder. Until his death in 1959, Warner commissions dozens of works by Calder, including at least ten works of jewelry for his wife, Edna. Among these are some substantial pieces fashioned from gold. (CF, Warner correspondence)

Summer: The Calders live in the Tanguy-Sage household in Woodbury, Connecticut, while the burned home is repaired. Calder and Louisa decide to take permanent residence at their home in Roxbury. (Calder 1966, 187; ASCR conversation with Mary Calder Rower, 16 November 1997)

Fall: Curt Valentin publishes Three Young Rats and Other Rhymes, with eighty-five drawings by Calder and edited by Sweeney. (CF, project file)

6–24 September: Calder is represented by a work on paper in the exhibition "Abstract and Surrealist Art in the United States" at the San Francisco Museum of Art. (CF, exhibition file)

28 November–23 December: The exhibition "Recent Work by Alexander Calder" at the Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, includes plaster and bronze sculptures and the drawings for Three Young Rats and Other Rhymes. (CF, exhibition file)

12 December 1944–31 January 1945: "The Imagery of Chess: A Group Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, Newly Designed Chessmen, Music, and Miscellany" is presented at Julien Levy Gallery, New York. Calder exhibits two chess sets alongside works by Duchamp, Ernst, and Tanguy, among others. (CF, exhibition file)

Before 25 December: After complaining to Calder that she has nothing to wear to the upcoming Vassar College Christmas party, Claflin receives a tiara that Calder dubs Fire Proof Veil. The headpiece is constructed of a series of sheet metal letters, "A, R, V, C, P, N, Y," each dangling from its own wire attached to a central headband. The letters stand for "Agnes Rindge Vassar College Poughkeepsie New York" and are designed to hang in front of the wearer's face. (CF, object file)

1945

6 January: Calder's father, Alexander Stirling Calder, dies in Brooklyn. Calder and Louisa leave their daughters in the care of the Massons and bury Stirling in Philadelphia. (ASCR conversation with Mary Calder Rower, 16 November 1997)

6–24 February: Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, presents "Recent Work by American Sculptors" and includes a standing mobile by Calder. (CF, exhibition file)

14 March: Calder receives a contract from composer Remi Gassmann on behalf of the University of Chicago for the design of costumes and scenery for the dance project Billy Sunday. (CF, Gassmann to Calder, 14 March; CF, Calder to Warner, 6 March, 2 April)

1 June: Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to make a work for the sculpture garden, Calder creates Man-Eater with Pennants. (CF, Calder to Warner, 1 June)

19 June: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presents the First Exhibition of the Museum Collection of Painting and Sculpture. Calder is represented by five sculptures. (CF, exhibition file)

Before 3 July: Calder produces a series of small-scale works, many from scraps trimmed during the making of other objects. Let's mail these little objects to [Louis] Carré, in Paris, and have a show, Duchamp suggests when he sees them; by taking advantage of the newly available international airmail system, Duchamp’s action predates “mail art” by nearly two decades. Carré responds to Duchamp’s proposal. Interested show Calder miniatures would also gladly exhibit mobile sculptures available all sizes and colours. (Calder 1966, 188; CF, Carré to Duchamp; CF, Duchamp to Calder, 3 July)

16 July: Calder packs thirty-seven miniature mobiles and stabiles into six small cartons and mails them to Carré in Paris. Due to U.S. Postal Service regulations, he gives the name of six different senders for each package: himself, Duchamp, Masson, Sweeney, Tanguy, and Renée (Ritou) Nitzschke. (CF, Calder to Carré, 19 July)

19 July: Calder proposes to Carré to have Sartre write an essay for his show. I met Jean-Paul Sartre when he was here, and he came & visited my workshop. Perhaps he would consent to write a little preface if you thought that desirable. (CF, Calder to Carré, 19 July)

After 14 August: Intrigued by the limitations on parcel size imposed by the U.S. Postal Service, Calder begins creating larger works for his show at Galerie Louis Carré that are collapsible and intended to be reassembled upon arrival in Paris. (CF, Calder to Carré, 14 August; Calder 1966, 188)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with twenty-nine illustrations by Calder and an essay by Robert Penn Warren, is published in New York by Reynal and Hitchcock. (CF, project file)

22 January–3 March: "Origins of Modern Sculpture" is presented at the Detroit Institute of the Arts and travels to the City Art Museum of St. Louis. (CF, exhibition file)

15 April: The Clay Club Gallery, New York, presents “Benefit: Exhibition of Sale of Sculpture to Help Raise Funds for the Sculpture Center” and includes a standing mobile by Calder. (CF, exhibition file)

12 May: Calder inquires with Willard whether she would be interested in having him make jewelry in gold, a material with which he is interested in working: I'd like to make some stuff in gold—but it makes a larger investment—shall we get into that racket? (CF, Calder to Willard, 12 May)

5–6 June: Calder takes his first transatlantic flight from New York to Paris to prepare for the exhibition at Galerie Louis Carré, Paris. (CF, passport)

12 August: Calder and Louisa attend the premiere of Pádraic Colum's play Balloon with mobile sets by Calder performed at the Ogunquit Playhouse, Maine. (CF, Calder to Warner, July)

30 August: In a series of letters, Calder and Keith Warner begin discussing the terms of Calder creating gold jewelry for Warner's wife: Would it be a fair proposition if I asked, as recompense, that you buy me an equal amount of gold? I have been wanting to make some more things of gold for Louisa and for the kids (as "heirlooms") but never seem to be able to afford the gold. (CF, Calder to Warner, 30 August)

7 September: Calder holds a performance of Cirque Calder in the family's Roxbury studio for his daughters: I have to show the children how to run it so that they can carry on. (CF, Calder to Warner, 30 August)

18 September–17 November: Calder's jewelry is included in the large group exhibition "Modern Jewelry Design" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Over the next two years, the show travels to museums in fifteen different cities throughout the United States. (CF, exhibition file)

19–30 November: Calder sails from Le Havre to New York on the John Ericsson. (Calder 1966, 194; CF, passport)

1947

7–29 January: Calder's work is on view at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon. (CF, exhibition file)

12 February: The Mirós and their daughter, Dolores, arrive in the United States. So I drove the La Salle (open, top down) straight to La Guardia, and got there just in time. So we installed them in a little apt. on 1st Ave. (very nice) and then had a bite to eat at Matisse’s. (CF, Calder to Warner, 15 February)

20 April: Miró celebrates his and Sandra's birthday with the Calders at their apartment on East Seventy-second Street, New York. He gives Sandra a drawing and she gives him a collage gouache of a butterfly. Calder presents Miró with a mobile personage made of animal bones. (ASCR conversation with Mary Calder Rower, 16 November 1997)

25 December: Calder's daughter Mary has a painful molar extracted on Christmas Day. Calder takes the tooth and memorializes it in a silver wire, caged pendant, which he gives to her for Christmas. (ASCR conversation with Mary Calder Rower, 8 August 2007)

1948

Hans Richter's film, Dreams that Money Can Buy, is finally released after being in production since 1945. Two sequences are made with Calder's collaboration: "Ballet," the fifth dream, and "Circus," the sixth dream. (CF, project file)

Calder exhibits his work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Washington, D.C. (Lipman 1976, 334)

Spring: Calder meets Burgess Meredith, who later visits the Calders in Roxbury to discuss making a film about Calder and his mobiles. Calder suggests Matter as the cinematographer. (Calder 1966, 197)

6 June–30 September: For the XXIV Biennale di Venezia—the first Biennale of the postwar period—Calder’s Arc of Petals is included in a presentation of Peggy Guggenheim’s collection curated by art historian Giulio Carlo Argan. (CF, exhibition file)

Summer: The Calders drive to the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Reno, and Lake Tahoe, where they spend two weeks with Kenneth and Peggy Hayes. After driving to Berkeley, they leave Sandra and Mary with the Hayes family, and fly to Los Angeles. (Calder 1966, 198–99; ASCR conversation with Mary Calder Rower, 23 October 1997)

7 September: Calder and Louisa arrive in Mexico City, where they stay at the Hotel Prince. They visit with Fernando Gamboa, director of the Museo de Bellas Artes, and with filmmaker Luis Buñuel and his family. (Calder 1966, 198–99)

8 September: Calder and Louisa arrive in Panama. I insisted on taking Louisa in a taxi to Panama City, to see the crazy traffic and open buildings I had seen sixteen years before, when a fireman on the S.S. Alexander. (Calder 1966, 198–99)

29 October: The Calders embark from Rio de Janeiro for the United States. (CF, passport)

November: In Berkeley, Calder and Louisa are reunited with their children. The family spends a week with the Hayes family before driving back across country with side trips to Sante Fe, New Mexico, and Texas. (Calder 1966, 204; CF, passport; ASCR conversation with Mary Calder Rower, 23 October 1997)

Before 2 May: Upon returning home from Brazil, Calder crafts a large brooch for Henrique Mindlin's wife, Helena. The brooch is in the form of a figa—a hand with the thumb curled under the forefinger—a symbol of luck in Brazil. Thank you, thank you, thank you ever so much for the most beautiful figa I have ever seen. You managed to make many females terribly envious of me, and this makes me oh! so happy! Calder eventually makes at least twenty pieces of jewelry in the figa motif, nearly all as gifts for family and friends. (CF, Mindlin to Calder)

After 6 May: Calder’s mother, Nanette, goes to live full time with the Calders in Roxbury. (CF, Nanette to Calder, 6 May)

15 May–11 September: Calder constructs his most ambitious mobile to date, International Mobile, for the Third International Exhibition of Sculpture, Philadelphia Museum of Art in collaboration with the Fairmount Park Art Association. (CF, exhibition file)

Summer: Calder builds a house for his mother on the Roxbury property. (CF, Nanette to Calder, 6 May)

30 November–17 December: Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, exhibits "Calder." The catalogue includes "The Studio of Alexander Calder" by Masson and illustrations by Calder of the objects exhibited. (CF, exhibition file)

1950

6 January: Happy As Larry, a play written by Donagh MacDonagh and directed by Burgess Meredith with sets by Calder, opens in New York at the Coronet Theatre. (CF, project file)

4–10 May: The Calder family sails from New York on the Ile de France and arrives in Le Havre. (CF, passport)

Mid-May: In Paris, the Calders rent an apartment for four months on rue Penthièvre from their friend, Médé Valentine. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 204; CF, Calder to Warner, 5 February)

2–8 August: The Calders leave Paris and take a train to Antwerp. From there, the family takes a Finnish ship Arcturus to Helsinki. (CF, passport)

9–13 August: The Calders visit Maire Gullichsen, who takes them to her villa, Mairea, in Norrmark for a week. (Calder 1966, 206)

14 August: The Calders leave from Turku, Finland, and take a boat to Stockholm, arriving the next day. They stay in the Grand Hotel and visit Eric Grate, a Swedish sculptor. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 208)

26–27 August: Departing Malmö, Sweden, the Calders take a train through Denmark and Germany, and arrive in Paris. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 208)

31 August–11 September: The Calders depart Paris for Antwerp, set sail the next day on the Europa, and arrive in New York. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 208)

1951

24 January: After two years of production, Works of Calder previews at the Museum of Modern Art. The film was directed by Matter and produced and narrated by Burgess Meredith, with music by John Cage. (CF, project file)

5 February: Calder participates in a symposium, "What Abstract Art Means to Me," sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with the exhibition "Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America." The idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interlarded with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form. (Calder 1951)

After March: Calder performs Cirque Calder at the Sert's home in Lattingtown, New York. (MS, photography collection; CF, correspondence file)

April: Calder designs the sets and costumes for Nucléa, written by Henri Pichette. The costumes include two large silver necklaces and a silver bracelet. (CF, project file; Calder 1966, 209–10)

3 May: Calder and Louisa attend the opening of Nucléa at the Théâtre du Palais de Chaillot, Paris. Directed by Jean Vilar with music by Maurice Jarre, the play is performed by Théâtre National Populaire. (CF, project file; Calder 1966, 210)

Mid-May: The Calders visit Masson and his family in Aix-en-Provence. They ask Masson to find them a house to rent for the following year. From Aix-en-Provence they travel to Varengeville. (Calder 1966, 210–11; Lipman 1976, 334)

29–30 May: Louisa flies from Paris to New York. Calder leaves Paris on 30 May and arrives in Italy to prepare his works for the XXVI Biennale di Venezia. (CF, passport)

3 June: Calder returns to Paris. (CF, passport)

6–7 June: Calder flies from Paris and arrives in New York. (CF, passport)

14–19 June: Calder represents the United States in the XXVI Biennale di Venezia. Sweeney installs the exhibition and writes a short text for the exhibition catalogue. Calder wins the Grand Prize for sculpture. (CF, exhibition file)

28 June: Calder accepts the commission from Carlos Raúl Villanueva, whom he met through Sert in 1951, to design an acoustic ceiling for Aula Magna, the auditorium of the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He collaborates with the engineering firm Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Calder 1966, 240; CF, Calder to Villanueva, 28 June)

Mid-September: Calder arrives in Bonn on 10 September with an invitation from the German State Department to tour West Germany. After two days he travels to Munich, where he meets Bruno Werner, a journalist who reviewed his first Berlin exhibition in 1929. He continues on to Mannheim and Darmstadt. (CF, passport and German identification card; Calder 1966, 211–12)

23–29 September: Calder stays in Berlin. (Calder 1966, 211–12)

After 29 September: Calder travels to Hamburg, where he meets the dealer Rudolf Hoffmann. He then goes on to Hanover, Bremen, and Cologne before returning to Bonn. (Calder 1966, 211–12)

9–10 October: Calder flies from Bonn to New York. (CF, passport)

Fall: Daughter Sandra goes to live in Paris. (CF, Sandra to parents, before 18 October)

18 November–9 December: Galerie la Hune, Paris, exhibits "Permanence du Cirque." The exhibition commemorates the publication of a book by the same title, which includes an essay by Calder, "Voici une petite histoire de mon cirque." (CF, exhibition file)

1953

1 July: The Calder family arrives at Le Havre after an eight-day voyage on the Flandre. Also on board is Ernest Hemingway. He appeared suddenly and I presented myself, but it was not much use. For I had nothing to say to him and he had nothing to say to me. And that went for Louisa too. (CF, Calder to Valentin, 26 May; Calder 1966, 213)

July: The Calders arrive in the hamlet of Les Granettes in Aix-en-Provence. Their house, Mas des Roches, has little water and no electricity. Calder uses the carriage shed as his studio, where he works on gouaches. At a blacksmith shop nearby, he makes a series of large standing mobiles conceived for the outdoors. (Calder 1966, 214)

August: The Calders visit Jean Davidson in the Loire Valley. Jean has purchased a mill house Moulin Vert, in the tiny town of Saché. (Calder 1966, 219–20; CF, Calder to Peggy, 8 September)

30 September: Calder receives a commission for a mobile from Middle East Airlines for their Beirut ticket office. (CF, Salaam to Calder, 30 September)

November: Back in Aix-en-Provence, the Calders find another house nearby, Malvalat, which has running water and electricity. Calder sets up a studio on the third floor and continues to concentrate on gouaches. (Calder 1966, 218; MoMA, Calder to Valentin, 2 November)

11 November: The Calders visit Jean to see his renovated mill house in Saché. Calder agrees to a trade of three mobiles for François Premier, a dilapidated seventeenth-century stone house built adjoining a cliff on Jean's property. (Calder, 1966, 220–21)

Mid-November: Calder rigs a studio in Jean's mill and constructs the mobiles. Through the winter, Jean organizes the renovation of François Premier and converts the wagon shed into a studio. A second small building across the street serves as the "gouacherie," a painting studio. (Calder 1966, 219–20; CF, Calder to mother and the Sterns, 16 November)

End of November: Calder plans a trip to Beirut to visit his friend Henri Seyrig and to make the mobile commissioned by Middle East Airlines. (Calder 1966, 222; CF, Calder to mother and the Sterns, 16 November)

15 December 1953–28 February 1954: Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil, presents the II Bienal. United States representation consists of three exhibitions prepared by the Museum of Modern Art, New York: two group shows and a solo show devoted to works by Calder. (CF, exhibition file)

1954

1–5 January: The Calder family travels on the Greek steamship Aurelia from Marseilles to Greece, where they spend the day in Athens. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 222)

8 January: The Calders stop in Alexandria, Egypt. (CF, passport)

10 January: The Calders arrive in Beirut after a stop in Limassol, Cyprus. They reside with the Seyrigs for a month, visiting Syria and Jordan by car. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 226)

January: Calder is given a room to serve as a studio in the Middle East Airlines ticket office, which is under construction. (Calder 1966, 226)

February: American University, Beirut, exhibits works Calder made during the last month. (CF, exhibition file)

7 December: A visa is issued for the Calders' trip to India. Calder and Louisa have been invited by Gira Sarabhai, an architect and designer, to a tour of India in exchange for works of art. (Calder 1966, 231–32)

29 December: Calder and Louisa leave New York and arrive in Paris. (CF, passport)

1955

9–10 January: En route to Bombay, Calder and Louisa fly from Paris to Beirut. They visit the Seyrigs and show the film Works of Calder at the American University. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 232)

12 January: The Calders arrive in Bombay. They journey by train to Gira Sarabhai's home in Ahmedabad, where Calder makes eleven sculptures and some gold jewelry. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 232–33)

15 August: Calder arrives in Caracas. He sets up a studio at the metal shop of the Universidad Central de Venezuela and sees Acoustic Ceiling installed in Aula Magna for the first time. Louisa plans to join Calder in Caracas, but a tornado hits Connecticut and causes extensive flooding; she cancels her trip. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 242)

9 November: The Calders and Davidsons leave Paris and arrive in Germany, where Calder has been commissioned to make a stabile for the American Consulate in Frankfurt. The Calders stay at the Frankfurter Hof. Calder works with the bridge builders Fries et Cie to construct the monumental stabile Hextopus. (Calder 1966, 247)

16 November: The Calders return to France by car. (CF, passport)

19–20 November: From Paris, the Calders take a train to Brussels. They fly to New York and return to Roxbury. (CF, passport)

15 March: The Committee of Art Advisors at UNESCO approves Calder's maquette for a standing mobile. Titled Spirale, the mobile top is made by Calder at Segré's Iron Works in Connecticut and the stabile bottom is made with the collaboration of Jean Prouvé in France. (CF, Evans to Calder, 15 March)

9 April: At Waterbury Iron Works in Connecticut, Calder finishes the mobile commissioned by the Port Authority of New York. He initially titles it .125, the gauge of the aluminum elements, although it is later dubbed Flight. The mobile is placed in a storeroom near the International Arrivals Building of Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport), where it is to be installed upon completion of the terminal. (CF, project file)

12 June: The Calders and their daughter Mary arrive in Paris. (CF, passport)

8–18 July: While visiting Ritou Nitzschke and André Bac in La Roche Jaune, Brittany, the Calders buy an old customs house, Le Palud, located at the mouth of the Tréguier River. A few times a year, at high tide, the house site becomes an island. (CF, Louisa to Nanette, 8 July; Calder 1966, 252–53)

25–30 July: The family arrives in Spain for a visit with Peter Bellew (writer) and his wife Ellen. They also visit Artigas, a ceramicist, in Gallifa (Barcelona) before returning to France. (CF, passport)

2 September: The Calders and Mary leave London and arrive in New York. (CF, passport)

20 September: Calder and Louisa see .125 installed in the International Arrivals Terminal of John F. Kennedy Airport for the first time. (CF, project file)

1958

January: Calder completes the motorized, monumental sculpture The Whirling Ear, a commission made for the pool in front of the United States Pavilion at the Brussels Universal and International Exhibition. The sculpture was made by Calder at Gowans-Knight in Watertown, Connecticut. (CF, project file; Calder 1966, 258, 260)

5–29 June: The Glory Folk, a ballet choreographed by John Butler with sets by Calder, is performed during the "Festival of Two Worlds," Spoleto, Italy. Calder flies to Spoleto to oversee the construction of his sets. (CF, project file)

11 June: The Calders arrive in Paris. (CF, passport)

22–23 August: Calder installs Spirale, a monumental standing mobile, at UNESCO in Paris and attends the dedication ceremony on the following day. (Calder 1966, 258–59)

17 September: The Calders arrive in New York. (CF, passport)

5 December 1958–8 February 1959: Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, presents the 1958 Pittsburgh Bicentennial International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture. Calder wins first prize in the sculpture category for Pittsburgh, a monumental mobile, which is purchased by and installed at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport. (CF, exhibition file)

24 May: Calder and Louisa host dinner at their home in Roxbury in honor of the AICA (International Association of Art Critics) XIth General Assembly. (CF, business file)

2 June: The Calders arrive in the Netherlands. (CF, passport)

3 June: The Calders arrive in Le Bourget, France. (CF, passport)

24 July–4 September: "American Painting and Sculpture 1930–1959: The Moscow Exhibition" is included as part of the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park, Moscow. Calder contributes Black Mobile and 7 Legged Beast. (CF, exhibition file)

31 August: The Calders receive a visa from the Brazilian Consulate in Paris. (CF, passport)

September: The Calders depart Paris and arrive in Rio de Janeiro, where they spend a month at the Gloria Hotel. During their stay, they visit Brazil's new capital, Brasília. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 253)

1 October: The Calders leave Brazil. (CF, passport)

1960

24 February: Calder is elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, and is inducted on 25 May. (CF, awards file)

25 February: The Calders return to Brazil for the Carnaval. (CF, passport)

7 March: The Calders leave Brazil, returning to the United States. (CF, passport)

Before 12 October: On their way to Le Havre, Calder and Louisa pay a visit to painter Pierre Tal-Coat in Normandy. Calder is envious of the size of his studio and is inspired to build a much larger studio of his own: But the size of the studio gnawed at me the moment I saw it, and I became very jealous. So, after our arrival in Roxbury, I immediately wrote Jean at the Moulin Vert, in Saché, asking to have a big studio built as soon as possible. (Calder 1966, 260)

1962

January: Calder and fellow artist Ben Shahn act as honorary co-chairmen for the Artists Committee to Free Siqueiros to call for the release of the Mexican painter, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and they promote an exhibition at the ACA Galllery of his work. Under arrest since 1960, Siqueiros is freed 14 June 1964. (New York Times, 2 January)

19 January: The Calders' grandson, Holton, is born in New York to Mary and Howard Rower. (CF, birth certificate)

27 March: In a letter to Giovanni Carandente, Calder agrees to a proposal to make a sculpture for the Spoleto Festival in Italy. He decides to make "a stabile, which will stand on the ground, & arch the roadway." His work results in Teodelapio, a monumental stabile, which is completed in August 1962. (Carandente 1996, 18–19)

1963

Hans Richter directs and films Alexander Calder: From the Circus to the Moon. (CF, project file)

Diego Masson commissions Earle Brown to compose a piece of music for the Percussion Quartet of Paris. The two men travel to Saché to meet with Calder, and Brown begins to work on the score, which he titles Calder Piece. (CF, project file)

Mid-January: Calder leaves Roxbury and flies to France to oversee work on six large stabiles at Etablissements Biémont. (Calder 1966, 265)

24 December: La Comédie de Bourges performs La Provocation with sets and costumes designed by Calder, and choreography by Pierre Halet. The play opens in Bourges, and is performed the following year in Tours (10 May 1964) and Paris (4 November 1964). (CF, project file)

1966

Calder completes the monumental standing mobile Chef d'orchestre for Earle Brown's Calder Piece. The mobile functions as both a "conductor," determining the sequence and speed of the music, and as one of the instruments whereupon the elements are struck or "played." (CF, project file)

2 January: On behalf of SANE, the Calders take out a full-page ad in the New York Times: A New Year, New World. Hope for: An end to hypocrisy, self-righteousness, self interest, expediency, distortion and fear, wherever they exist. With great respect for those who rightly question brutality, and speak out strongly for a more civilized world. Our only hope is in thoughtful Men—Reason is not treason. (New York Times, 2 January)

10 January: The Calders set sail on the United States and return to Saché. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 276)

February: In a hopeful gesture, Calder donates Object in Five Planes, a monumental stabile, to the United States Mission at the United Nations, New York, and dubs it Peace. The dedication ceremony takes place in May, when Calder returns from Europe. (New York Times, 8 February; CF, project file)

18 February: Galerie Maeght, Paris, exhibits "Calder: Gouaches et Totems." The catalogue includes "Oiseleur du fer," a poem by Jacques Prévert; "Alexander Calder" by Meyer Schapiro; "Les Gouaches de Calder" by Nicholas Guppy; and "De l'Art Students League aux Totems," excerpted from Calder's autobiography, to be published in May of 1966. Cover and illustrations are by Calder. (CF, exhibition file)

7 March: The Calders return to New York. (CF, passport)

16 March: The Calders return to France. (CF, passport)

Spring: Pantheon Books publishes Calder: An Autobiography with Pictures. Calder had been dictating the text to his son-in-law, Jean Davidson, over the previous year and a half. (CF, publication file)

26–27 December: Calder and Louisa fly from Paris to Monaco to see his monumental standing mobile Monaco, which has recently been installed. They attend the dedication the following morning with Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, returning to Paris that afternoon. (CF, Calder to Shahn, 9 January 1967)

1967

Calder makes a gift of the large standing mobile Frisco to the Museo de la Habana, Cuba. The Cuban Government issues a postage stamp of it. (CF, exhibition file)

1 February–5 April: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, exhibits "Calder: 19 Gifts from the Artist." (CF, exhibition file)

27 February: Calder Piece, written by Earle Brown and featuring Calder's Chef d'orchestre, is performed by Diego Masson and the Percussion Quartet of Paris at the Théâtre de l'Atelier. After the premiere, Calder remarks, I thought you were going to hit it harder. (CF, project file)

March–April: Mathias Goeritz, an architect, writes to Calder in Saché, inviting him to create a stabile for the 1968 summer Olympic Games in Mexico City; Calder agrees. (CF, Calder to Goeritz, 29 April)

14 March: The Calders return to the United States. (CF, passport)

12 April: The Calders return to France. (CF, passport)

May: Calder's monumental stabile in unpainted stainless steel, commissioned by the International Nickel Company, is presented at the 1967 Universal and International Exposition (Expo '67) in Canada, where the theme is "Man and His World." I called it Three Discs, but when I got over to Canada, they wanted to call it Man. (Arnason and Mulas 1971, 205; CF, project file)

Fall: The Calders travel to Italy. At the suggestion of Carandente, Massimo Bogianckino, artistic director of the Teatro dell'Opera, Rome, commissions Calder to develop a work for the stage. Calder begins Work in Progress in December 1967. (CF, project file)

October: New York City holds an outdoor group exhibition, "Sculpture in Environment." Given the choice of any site in the city, Calder places two stabiles, Little Fountain and Triangle with Ears, in Harlem. (New York Times, 2 September)

8 November: Calder sends final instructions from Saché for El Sol Rojo, the stabile he created for the 1968 summer Olympic Games in Mexico City. (CF, Calder to Goeritz, 8 November)

31 December: After spending Christmas in the United States, the Calders arrive in Mexico City, where Calder oversees work on the intermediate maquette for El Sol Rojo. (CF, Calder to Goeritz, 8 November)

Around 9 March: Calder is awarded the Officer of the Légion d'Honneur of France, possibly on the opening date of the exhibition. The presentation is made by M. Hoppenot, former ambassador to Washington. (CF, exhibition file; CF, awards file)

11 March: Calder's Work in Progressis performed by the Teatro dell'Opera, Rome. For thirty years I have been thinking about a production that would be entirely mine, form and music working together. I long ago discussed this with Massine, but he insisted on having dancers. I later made stage sets, but this is not exactly what I wanted to do … for Satie’s Socrate, Pichette’s Nucléa, John Butler’s The Glory Folk in Spoleto, for Joe Lazzini in Marseille. The idea of a production that was totally mine had already come to me in spirit in 1926 when I finished the Cirque, and when I tried to frame it in a stage opening, amusing myself by thinking it an actual theatre. (CF, project file; Carandente 1983)

1969

Calder designs sets and costumes for Métaboles, choreographed by Joseph Lazzini, scored by Henri Dutilleux, and produced by Théâtre Français de la Danse. (CF, project file)

Spring: Janey Waney, commissioned by the N.K. Winston Corporation, is installed at the Smith Haven Mall in the Long Island village of Lake Grove. The force behind the site-specific project is the developer's wife, Jane Holzer––or "Baby Jane," a star of Andy Warhol's films––for whom the sculpture was named. (CF, project file)

3 June: Calder attends the dedication ceremony for his commissioned monumental stabile Gwenfritz, which is installed outside the Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (CF, project file)

7 June: Stevens awards Calder the degree of Doctor of Engineering, Honoris Causa, on the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation. (CF, awards file)

14 June: Calder attends the dedication ceremony for La Grande vitesse, a monumental stabile commissioned by the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, in August 1967. This is the first sculpture to be funded by the public art program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). (CF, project file)

1971

Calder designs sets and costumes for the ballet Amériques, choreographed by Norbert Schmuki, scored by Edgard Varèse, and performed by the Ballet-Théâtre Contemporain in Amiens, France. (CF, object file)

26 May: The American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters awards Calder the Gold Medal for Sculpture. Calder's work is shown in the Academy's group exhibition from 27 May–20 June. (Lipman 1976, 338; CF, awards file)

1972

31 May: The Calders sponsor an ad in the New York Times calling for Richard Nixon's impeachment: Upon the Impeachment of Richard Nixon, "for high crimes and misdemeanors, the Constitution of the United States, provides that he, among others shall be removed from office . . . for conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." (New York Times, 31 May)

4 June: The Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Art commissions Calder to make a monumental sculpture for its new building. The mobile, designed specifically for the central court of the National Gallery's East Building, is completed and installed after Calder's death in 1976. (CF, project file)

10 October: Calder attends the dedication ceremony for the monumental stabile Stegosaurus at the Alfred E. Burr Memorial Mall in Hartford. Following the event, he receives an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Hartford. (CF, project file)

25 October: The festival "Alexander Calder Day" in Chicago includes a circus parade with the Schlitz forty-horse hitch and the dedications of the motorized Universe at the Sears Tower and the monumental stabile Flamingo at the Federal Center Plaza. Flamingo is the first work of art commissioned by the General Services Administration (GSA) under the new federal program wherein 0.5 percent of the budget for new construction goes toward commissioning art. (CF, exhibition file)

15 May: The Calders, Marcel Breuer, and others who worked on the UNESCO building in Paris protest UNESCO's expulsion of Israel in a New York Times ad: We artists who are citizens of the world urge the General Conference to reverse itself and end all sanctions against Israel, and let the building we created be saved as a vision of hope, not as a symbol of tragedy. (New York Times, 15 May)

29 May–1 June: Flying Colors is exhibited at the Thirty-first Paris Air Show; on 31 May, the plane is flown over France with the Calders and their guests aboard. Calder hand paints the plane's engine covers. (Lipman 1976, 340)

14 November: Calder is awarded the United Nations Peace Medal, and Louisa Calder receives the Woman of the Year Award from the World Federation of the United Nations Associations. (CF, awards file)

17 November: Commissioned again by Braniff Airlines, Calder designs Flying Colors of the United States for the flagship of the airline's United States fleet. The plane is dedicated by Betty Ford at Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. Calder flies back to Kennedy Airport, New York, where he is presented with the Bicentennial Medal of New York City. (Preview, 25 November)

1976

Before 28 May: The Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, commissions Calder to design a monumental sculpture for their garden. (CF, Oxenaar to Calder, 28 May)

29 June: Calder and Louisa travel to Otterlo for the Kröller-Müller museum commission. The project, for which Calder creates a maquette, is never executed. (CF, Oxenaar to Calder, 28 May; CF, Calder to Oxenaar, 23 June)

1–10 October: The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance organizes the "Alexander Calder Festival." The event includes the dedication of White Cascade on 7 October at the Federal Reserve Bank, and the premiere of Under the Sun, a dance tribute to Calder performed by the Pennsylvania Ballet. During the weeklong celebration, Calder receives an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania. (CF, awards file)

14 October 1976–6 February 1977: The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, with Jean Lipman as curator, exhibits "Calder's Universe," a major retrospective. The exhibition travels to fifteen cities throughout the United States and Japan. (CF, exhibition file)

Before November: President Gerald Ford offers the Medal of Freedom to Calder. Calder replies, I was pleased to receive your invitation last week, but felt I could not accept in a case where my acceptance would imply my accord with the harsh treatment meted out to conscientious objectors and deserters. As from the start I was against the war and now am working with "amnesty" I didn't feel I could come to Washington. When there will be more justice for these men I will feel differingly [sic].Ford posthumously awards Calder the Medal of Freedom. Louisa Calder declines to attend the ceremony. Freedom should lead to amnesty after all these years and it doesn't seem as though it were going to happen. Freedom means freedom for all. (CF, Calder to Ford, c. 20 October; CF, telegram, Louisa to Ford, 4 January 1977)

10 November: Calder returns with Louisa to New York from Washington, D.C., where he has finalized the details for Mountains and Clouds, a monumental stabile and mobile for the Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C. (CF, object file)

11 November: Calder dies in New York City at the home of his daughter Mary. (New York Times, 12 November)

1 December 1976–8 January 1977: Galerie Maeght, Paris, exhibits "Calder: Mobiles and Stabiles." The catalogue includes the essay "L'art et la comédie" by Jean Frémon and "Forme Humaine" by Jean Davidson, with cover and illustrations by Calder. (CF, exhibition file)

6 December: The Whitney Museum of American Art holds a memorial service. Officiating is director Tom Armstrong, with remarks by Sweeney, Saul Steinberg, cartoonist Robert Osborn, and Arthur Miller, and with a solo violin performance by Alexander Schneider. (CF, event file)

1977

10–11 November: "The National Tribute to Alexander Calder" celebrates the artist with a program that includes a revival of the 1936 presentation of Erik Satie’s symphonic drama Socrate with mobile decor recreated from Calder's designs, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; and Four Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein with music by Virgil Thomson. (CF, project file)

15 November–30 December: In New York, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters holds "Alexander Calder: Memorial Exhibition." (CF, exhibition file)

Exhibitions

EXHIBITIONS

1925

New York Society of Independent Artists, Waldorf-Astoria, New York. Ninth Annual Exhibition of The Society of Independent Artists. 6–29 March 1925.Group Exhibition

1926

Artists Gallery, New York. January 1926.Group Exhibition

New York Society of Independent Artists, Waldorf-Astoria, New York. Tenth Annual Exhibition of The Society of Independent Artists. 5–28 March 1926.Group Exhibition

Anderson Galleries, Whitney Studio Club, New York.Whitney Studio Club Eleventh Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by Members of the Club. 8–20 March 1926.Group Exhibition

1936

Socrate (1936). Music by Erik Satie (1920); mobile decor by Alexander Calder; conducted by Virgil Thomson. Performed for the First Hartford Music Festival at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.Theatrical Performance

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America. 23 January–25 March 1951.Group Exhibition

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The 75th Anniversary Exhibition of Painting & Sculpture by 75 Artists Associated with the Art Students League of New York. February–April 1951.Group Exhibition

Brussels Universal and International Exhibition. American Art: Four Exhibitions. 17 April–18 October 1958.Group Exhibition

The Glory Folk (1958). One of four Chamber Ballets choreographed by John Butler; set includes a stabile and mobile designed by Calder; music arranged by Lucy Brown; costumes by Geoffrey Holder.Theatrical Performance

John F. Kennedy International Airport, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New York. Flight (.125). August 1958.Installation / Dedication Ceremony

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Painting and Sculpture from the American National Exhibition in Moscow. 28 October–15 November 1959. Originated from American National Exhibition, Sokolniki Park, Moscow.Group Exhibition

American Academy of Arts and Letters and National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York. Exhibition of Work by Newly Elected Members and Recipients of Honors and Awards. 27 May–20 June 1971.Group Exhibition

The National Tribute to Alexander Calder (1977). Program included a revival of the 1936 presentation of Erik Satie’s symphonic drama Socrate with mobile decor recreated from Calder's designs, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; and Four Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein with music by Virgil Thomson. Performed at the Beacon Theater, New York City.Memorial / Tribute; Theatrical Performance

1984

Whitney Museum of American Art, Fairfield County, Stamford, Connecticut. Calder: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. 20 January–21 March 1984.Solo Exhibition

Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York. Calder: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of Modern Art. 17 May–11 July 1984. Originated from the Whitney Museum of American Art, Fairfield County, Stamford, Connecticut.Solo Exhibition

Hudson River Museum in cooperation with Whitney Museum of American Art, Yonkers, New York. Calder Creatures Great and Small. 21 July–15 September 1985.Solo Exhibition

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington. Calder Creatures Great and Small. 27 September–10 November 1985. Originated from the Hudson River Museum in cooperation with the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yonkers, New York.Solo Exhibition

1986

Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey. Calder Creatures Great and Small. 11 May–29 June 1986. Originated from the Hudson River Museum in cooperation with Whitney Museum of American Art, Yonkers, New York.Solo Exhibition

Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut. The Mobile, the Stabile, the Animal; Wit in the Art of Alexander Calder. 14 September–31 December 1995.Solo Exhibition

The Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Terese and Alvin S. Lane Collection: Twentieth-Century Sculpture and Sculptors' Works on Paper. 30 September–3 December 1995.Group Exhibition

The Baltimore Museum of Art. Celebrating Calder. 4 October 1995–7 January 1996. Originated from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.Solo Exhibition

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 18 September 2007–3 February 2008.Group Exhibition

Tampa Museum of Art, Florida. Arp, Calder, and Miró: Modern Masters from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. 5 October 2013–19 January 2014. Originated from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.Group Exhibition